Sarah and I in Wurzburg
We made it to a town called Garmisch-Partikan on the Austrian-German border later that evening and headed to the only campsite in the area to price it up and see what it had to offer facilities wise. The owner was an arrogant arse who asked us to move on when we parked in the car park looking at the prices and working out when we were going to stay there. That made our mind up for us that we were not going to stay there at all. We’d rather drive back over the border to Austria! The following few nights we stayed in a couple or decent lay-by’s right a larger river that ran through the valley so it was not all that bad.
On the Saturday we went for a half day hike to stretch the legs out after a few days out from any strenuous activity. We headed up from the base of Alpspitze meandering up through old ski runs and up to the lower cable car. We were going to head down from here but the weather was great and we got up in good time so we carried on up to the second cable car station. A quick lunchstop and some photos and it was time to head down. We both would have loved to carry on to the summit which only looked like a few hours from where we were but then we would have still had a 5 hour trek down and we had a nice weather window to Zugspitze the following day.
We set off nice and early for the start of the climb hoping to get ahead of most of the large weekend groups that we had been reading about and headed off op the river gorge. As the sun started to poke over the edge of the gorge we were snaking in and out of tunnels and over bridges that had been carved out of the gorge to give access to the huts and glacier below the summit. Within a few hours we had cleared the gorge and only bumped into one other group who had set off just behind us from the lower car park.
When we made it to the hut about 2 ½ hours in we got some funny looks from people as it was only 07:30 and they realised how early we must have left to make it there by that time. There seems to be a much more relaxed attitude in Germany and Austria to the whole glacier crossing scenario. It gets drummed into you that they should be crossed as early as possible to avoid having to cross them later in the afternoon when the sun has been baking them for a few hours.
Admittedly this was a one way crossing as we were going to descend via the cable car but still, we wanted to get over the glacier and onto the rock well before lunchtime, mainly to avoid having to climb in the heat. The long slog from the hut to the base of the glacier felt like it took forever. Some straightforward scrambling and a little via ferrata over the Brett section was fun but the never ending scree that followed was tough. Once on the glacier we could see the route across onto the main climb. It was far simpler than out research had shown, very lightly crevassed and a new ladder had been installed to avoid a large leap over from the ice onto the rock. From this point it was all via ferrata up 700m to within 10m of the summit.
It took us about 2 ½ hours to complete this section and we seemed to be going at a decent pace with very few people passing us on the way up. The few that did were either soloing without any equipment or only using their equipment for the tougher sections. The entire climb was great fun, some tougher sections but what was really nice was that not too much of it was hauling yourself up a cable, there was lots of scrambling to be done.
When we finally broke up onto the final ridge we had a little snow to contend with but nothing more than we had seen over the past few weeks. A few metres from the end of the route we could make out the crowds that were on the summit and a fully dressed up monk was waiting at the top of out path taking photos of the emerging climbers. I guess he was fascinated by the way in which we had climbed the mountain but for us, having just climbed it, having a monk at the top of the route was equally as fascinating, so I took a photo of him as he took one of us.
We had lunch and a beer at one of the summit cafes before wandering round the huge venue that was perched up there. A cable car ride down and then a little train ride saw us make the car park for about 3pm. It had been another great day and another great route in the mountains. Confidence was pretty high after this but it was now the end of our trip. We had planned to do one final via ferrata back on the Austrian side of the border and a mountain called Wankspitze but the weather blew us out once again so we headed to Fussen in Germany to start the 3 day drive up the Romantic Road. We had less than a week to make it back to Dunkerque so we packed up the kit bags for the final time and waved goodbye to the Alps.
We started the Romantic Road with a trip to Neuschwanstein Castle which is the fairy tale castle on which the Disney logo is based on. After this we started North up B17 which is known as the Romantische Strasse. It is a 400km drive, ride or hike that takes you through Southern Germany’s prettiest towns and villages. There were loads of great walled medieval villages to explore and little castle and market towns along the way. Halfway up we took a detour into Munich to meet my Dad as he was on holiday there so we met up for an afternoon in the Englicher Gartens for a picnic and some ale. From here we headed back onto the main route and took the next 2 days to get up to Wurzburg where we met up with Sarah and Roland on Friday who were friends of Lisa’s from back home.
That evening we decided to head towards the ferry and get ourselves to Brugges for a day of sightseeing before jumping on the ferry early Tuesday morning. This is where the breakdown saga begins...
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