Blog Posts in Category: Walking

Aggenstein

I was certainly not happy with my 5:30 alarm after a late night the previous night due to watching sunset from the Jochberg after work, however we knew that the best of the weather was in the morning and due to heading to the Allgäu we had a longer than usual drive. We had decided to continue to make the most of being allowed into Austria, as while the start, finish and peak were all in Germany, the last part of the ascent was firmly in Austria, and more importantly so was the pre summit Hütte. The start of the walk was beautiful, and fairly relaxing as the lift station was not at the bottom of the steep ascent, so we enjoyed the warm up walking through the alpine meadows filled with spring flowers. However we were soon in the woods, and slogging up the ascent, which after the previous nights fast ascent of Jochberg certainly felt harder than it should have. We enjoyed some food at a brief clearing before heading up the steep slopes towards the Bad Kissinger Hütte. We stopped for a well earned drink at the. Read the full article…

Kohlbergspitze

With a good forecast for the day Rob and I headed back to Austria to enjoy our access to the bigger mountains. While we wanted to enjoy the bigger mountains, we had to be careful not to head too high due to the amount of snow. We elected to do the Kohlbergspitze which is between Bichlbach and the Plansee. This was the weekend where I have switched from my winter boots to trainers, and I really hope I don’t need to go back, it was so much more enjoyable being out in soft, light trainers! The route we decided to do was a round tour, which went up a scramble which we hoped would be ok with the snow. As it was south facing and it looked OK from the valley, we decided to go for it. The ascent out of the valley was brutal, between leaving the main valley path and getting to the summit there was 1150m of ascent in 4km! We made good time up the path in the woods and soon separated from the main track. As we walked along and ascended above the treeline the. Read the full article…

Hinteres Hörnle

The weather forecast for this weekend changed every day last week, one day it was sunny, the next raining, then sunny again, but it generally settled on not very good, but possibly dry. We elected to stay as far north as possible in the hope that the edge of the mountains had the better weather, and based on the views this seemed like a good decision. We decided to head back to Hinteres Hörnle, which I skied earlier this year with Helen. On our walk up it became apparent that we could not do our planned descent due to closures due to logging, however as it turned out this meant we did a far nicer loop. The ascent was fairly steep up in the woods, however it was fascinating seeing the incredibly bright green spring leaves, especially with the contrast against the evergreen trees. As we emerged above the treeline it was clear that we had made a good decision to stay north, as there was lots of cloud about, and it was very hazy. We made good time up to the summit, briefly enjoyed the view and then quickly. Read the full article…

Vorderunnütz

Poor weather dominated most of the bank holiday weekend in Bavaria, however thankfully there was a brief abatement to the rain in the mountains from Sunday evening to Monday late morning. After enjoying sunset at Ammersee last night, Rob and I made the most of the easing of restrictions and headed over the Austrian border to the Achensee. Our peak was the Vorderunnütz, which turned out to be a lovely walk with excellent views of the local Austrian peaks. Given the rain which was forecast from 11, we met relatively early at 7:30 expecting to get fairly wet on the descent, but hoping to get to the summit before the rain. Despite a number of photo stops, we made excellent time on the ascent over 1100m in just over 2 hours, which certainly got the blood flowing! Despite the lack of sunlight, the views were excellent as the air was clear, and it was great to be out in another new area. We could see the weather closing in as we started the descent, but due to a quick descent we were almost back before the rain really set in.. Read the full article…

Über die drei Kampen

After the effort of the snow up high the previous day we were keen to have a slightly easier day, a few weeks previously from the Hirschberg I had noticed a ridge which looked excellent, and more importantly with a high point of only 1600m. It was a fairly long walk in in the woods from Lenggries to the Hirschtalsattel, however the woods provided us with some shelter from the sun.

Friederspitz and Frieder

Having not been in the mountains for a while, combined with a week with a mixture of fresh snow and rain in the mountains, before it suddenly warmed up for the weekend, it was hard to know how high we could go without the snow being very hard work. We took a chance and headed to Frieder as we knew the view from the top with the clear air that we were expecting would be brilliant. On the drive towards the mountains in the morning it was quite clear that the air was indeed very clear, and a good sign of the views we were going to have. From the car park we gained 400m easily up a forrest track, and then another 500m easily up a winding path to just below the Frieder-Alm. Here we met the snow, and our progress slowed down significantly. Thankfully another team had gone up in front of us, so we mostly had food prints to follow, however this did not make progress easy. The difficult progress was more than made up for by the stunning views in every direction. We could see well. Read the full article…

Brecherspitz

After missing a day of excellent weather due to needing to complete Brexit admin in Munich, we were disappointed to see the weather forecast on Friday was not very good. But wanting to make the most of Becky being here, we decided to head out anyway, and it was certainly a good decision as we had sunshine all day. We headed down to Neuhaus, where we did a circuit which went up the obvious ridge up to the Brecherspitz, before traversing across to the Brecherspitz Vorgipfel and then heading back down to Neuhaus. On the drive past Schliersee we could clearly see the Brecherspitz and our ascent ridge, which looked fantastic. The walk up through the woods was very pleasant as it was a good path and a nice gradient, we soon emerged at the Ankl-Alm and headed up to the ridge. The views over Schliersee were great, albeit very hazy. The walk up the ridge was very enjoyable with changing views, and a gentle breeze. As we approached the top the wind became stronger, but we were greeted by more excellent views at the summit. After getting to the. Read the full article…

Staffel, Jachenau

After what has seemed like two weeks of glorious weather since I arrived back in Germany, the first bad weather day was of course on a Saturday. James and I were nonetheless keen to do something, as we both felt the need to improve our fitness. We had planned to do a walk which had brilliant views, but given the conditions elected to do a mountain which is otherwise less inspiring. Unusually, and mostly due to the weather, we didn’t leave Munich until after 10 which made for a nice lie in. The weather was pretty much as forecast, grey but not precipitating. The walk up was mostly up good tracks, until the last bit were we headed straight up the ridge, rather than circumnavigating the hill and doing a “there and back” to the top. We made excellent time and were at the top only 1h40 after leaving the car, after a short lunch break where we admired what the view was supposed to look like, we descended down the other side. The descent was very enjoyable down through the forrest, and with the snow covering was very easy. Read the full article…