< Previous | List | Next > Karwendelhaus to Hallerangerhaus
Click to enlarge!
The day ahead of me was supposed to be one of the highlights of the big Munich-Venice route - the "Königsetappe" (literally translated, the king's stage of the journey). The total elevation gain and loss would be around 1450m each: 900m up, 1450m down, 550m up; on a total distance of 16km.
I set off for this trail despite the advisory of the staff at the mountain hut - they said that with temperatures hovering around freezing at the higher elevations, they didn't advise people to hike that trail, since the ice could make it dangerous. I figured that if things got too bad, I could always turn around; and that it was their job to be too careful... I've always been confident enough in my ability to know when to turn around: before it gets too dangerous.
I set off in somewhat heavy fog, quickly gaining elevation. After a while, the fog began to lift, and revealed a blue sky. While temperatures were still quite low, the weather was clearly cooperating. Unless someone left real early, I was the first person on the trail; and on my way up I could see that one group of two and a solo hiker were following me (it turns out that nobody else would, that day).
I lost quite a bit of time starting maybe 100-200m of vertical elevation from the ridge because the trail was very hard to follow. Or rather, the trail just vanished in all the loose rocks and fresh snow. After a while, and much searching, I managed to find a way up that didn't seem too dangerous, and after a while found the trail again. The group of two had almost caught up with me at a point maybe 50-100m vertical elevation from the ridge. The trail headed up on the left, and there was a different path crossing a snow-field to the right. I followed the trail, but ultimately decided to turn around because it had become too dangerous: the elevation gain was quite abrupt, and there was a lot of snow and not much rock to give me a firm grip. Meanwhile, the two other hikers continued on the unmarked trail, and I could see that they were making progress towards the ridge. The other hiker caught up with me - a woman maybe my age. I told her that I had turned around on the official trail because I deemed it unsafe for my gear and skillset. She said her guidebook said to cross the snowfield near the ridge, and she asked if I'd like to join her on the "unofficial" (unmarked) trail. Since the other two hikers seemed to have made it, I agreed; and we headed up without any difficulty as well.
We met the other two at the ridge a short while later, and stopped there for a while (all four of us). Turns out the official trail would have joined the ridge maybe 50m away from the point where we reached it; so it's a bit strange that the official marks would lead hikers up a much steeper incline than necessary.
It was time to head down into the next valley, and we had the entire route down in plain view. Following a trail as it goes down 1450m of elevation is impressive, and I was momentarily thinking, "my knees will never survive this". I had been wearing knee braces since starting on the hike that morning.
As it turns out, I would hike together with Jenny for the rest of the day. We didn't talk much the first part of the hike; which was straight down over a very steep stone "wall", with lots of steel cables (it wouldn't have been possible without them), but talked quite a lot afterwards. By the time we reached the valley floor 1450m below (which reminded me of Yosemite Valley) it started raining again, but that wasn't so bad - the difficult and dangerous part of the day's hike was behind us. We still had a 550m elevation gain ahead of us before we'd reach the next mountain hut. We got there sometime around 6pm. We checked in, and were put in the same room, a group room albeit we'd be the only ones in it that night. There were five mattresses on the ground, and thus each of us would end up with a mattress next to a wall with a lot of empty space in between.
Written Monday December 24th 2007 in my apartment in Bivange, Luxembourg; based on notes written down on Thursday, 17-Aug-2006
Accommodation: Hallerangerhaus
- Kilometres hiked: 16km (9.9mi)
- Ascent: 1450m (4757ft)
- Descent: 1450m (4757ft)