This year the start to the paragliding season was very slow, however I eventually managed to get my first flight in at Mayrhofen at the start of April. It was very busy due to a competition which led me to make some poor decisions to try and get away from the crowds, which meant that after a short soar around take off, I just enjoyed a nice long glide down the valley.
We had two nights booked in the Jamtalhütte for some ski mountaineering and in the week running up to the trip, the weather could not make its mind up as to if the weekend would have excellent weather or awful, what was however certain was that the day we approached the hut would be spectacular. We set off from Munich via train in the morning and after a very smooth train journey, and a slightly less smooth bus journey which made me feel rather green, we arrived in Galtür in time for some bakery lunch prior to setting off for the hut. The skin up to the hut was beautiful, with snow from the village, a good track and wonderful scenery. It wasn’t long after we left Galtür that we started to feel like we were in the big mountains and fairly remote. After a 10km skin in we arrived at the hut, where I was certainly feeling the lack of exercise from the previous few months! We didn’t really have time to head out for a tour, and by this point the cloud had started to come in. We. Read the full article…
With Becky’s progression with skiing I felt like it was time for her to attempt her first proper ski tour. The challenge was to find a route which felt like a proper ski tour, with a wonderful view from the top, but which actually did not have too much ascent, or more to the point, off piste descent. After looking through multiple guidebooks I eventually settled on the Kleiner Gamstein, from the Hoch Fügen car park, as it was a significant viewpoint, with an approach along a piested xc route before the final ascent. It was a lovely way up with fantastic views in great snow conditions. I had expected good views, but it is safe to say that I hadn’t expected the views from the summit to be quite as good as they were. Despite the wall to wall sunshine the summit was fairly cold, so after a few photos and forcing our lunch down quickly we set off on the descent. The descent took us quite a while, as unsurprisingly Becky found her first proper off piste descent pretty difficult. Nonetheless, we were back at the car in. Read the full article…
All to quickly it was once again the end of another year and time to reflect on the year. This year we really started to settle into our routine of living an hour from the Alps, with travel being much easier and having settled into Munich life, both professionally and socially. Unfortunately at the start of the year Becky had an accident and badly broke her wrist which was also misdiagnosed which delayed her recovery. This significantly impacted our year as we were unable to climb, klettersteig or ride our bikes for most of the year. The highlights of the year for me have to be Becky’s continued progression at skiing with her initial foray into ski touring, my ski mountaineering adventure on the Ruderhofspitze, my continued paragliding progression with my first flight over 100km, our wonderful holiday together to Slovenia and a beautiful walk near munich with a combination of snow&autumn colours. Winter Winter continued with lots of weekends away skiing with family, friends from the UK and friends from Munich, it seemed like we had a constant stream of visitors which as wonderful. Becky’s progression continued and she. Read the full article…
Salzburg has been on my list of cities near Munich to visit for a while, and while David was visiting seemed like a good opportunity. The forecast was a but mixed, with some sun, some cloud and some rain. Thankfully we were again very lucky with the weather and it was clear (ish) most of the day and most importantly it was clear when it needed to be in the blue hour. We started the day by walking from the main station, through the gardens of Schloss Mirabell before heading up to Festung Hohensalzburg. Initially it was bright sunshine which meant that the gardens of Schloss Mirabell were beautiful, did not produce any nice photos. The same cannot be said from the top of the castle, as the view into the mountains and over Salzburg was wonderful, with softened light due to the high cloud, wonderful autumnal colours and a beautiful city. After we were done in the castle, we walked up the hill on the other side of the river, which gave some absolutely stunning views. Here is somewhere I will definitely return to in the summer for a. Read the full article…
A lot had changed in the mountains since the previous weekend on Schellschlicht, as a significant amount of snow had fallen during the week. The weather forecast in the morning looked stunning, with high cloud forecast for the afternoon before more precipitation in the evening. We also needed a short day as Becky had to drive the van back to the UK the next day, so we settled on an early ascent of the Veitsberg, which had a book time of 4h15mins if the ridge on from the Veitsberg was excluded. The walk was really enjoyable from the get-go, as the autumnal colours were just stunning, and with a snow line down to only just above the car park gave us some really beautiful scenes with autumnal trees covered in plenty of snow. A rare combination thanks to a late autumn and a reasonable amount of early snowfall. Despite the snowfall we made good time, and were soon at the start of the ridge up to the summit. Here was where the day progressed from great to outstanding, as the views were just spectacular due to the clear air, green. Read the full article…
After doing a sunset hike up the Rotwand a few days earlier, we decided to do another sunset hike after work. As it was a post work hike, with an early autumn sunset, it had to be both close to Munich and a short walk. This meant that the Kranzhorn seemed like the obvious choice, as it was an easy drive on the Motorway towards Kufstein, before parking at a high Wanderparkplatz which meant that we only had 425m of ascent and 2.7km to walk to get to the summit. After a quick ascent we were at the summit in 50 mins, which gave us plenty of time to admire the view before the sunset and to eat our sandwiches. I couldn’t find any compositions which had any foreground interest, so it was a simple composition just consisting of the view towards the setting sun. There were some high clouds which remained after sunset which gave a beautiful afterglow. The we descended while it was still just about light to the Kranzhorn Schutzhütte, and from here we descended the longer way down the easy track, which was definitely faster in. Read the full article…
We decided to head up the Zwölferkopf for lunch while Becky’s mum was visiting, and as the conditions were good I took advantage and enjoyed a short scenic flight after lunch. The flight was never going to be a long XC, but it was very enjoyable with a mixture of soaring in the valley wind and thermal flying when I was above the Rofangebirge. After a very enjoyable flight it was time to land, which took a bit longer than anticipated due to some very strange valley winds which were converging above the landing field, which created a lot of lift and a lot of turbulence. After about 25mins of struggling with descending and then re-ascending I did eventually manage to stay down and land out away from the convergence.