Difficulty Is Subjective
August 6-10, 2018
When the line to check a bag with Easyjet has at least a hundred people in it, it's easy to blame the airline. They suck, but they're cheap (except for the exorbitant charge to check a bag if you want to bring hiking poles with you). As the line crept slowly and the time until our flight crept much faster, the employees started pulling people on the most pressing flights out of the big line and moving them into a separate line that was supposed to move faster, but didn't. We looked on in disbelief as single groups took five to ten minutes to get their bags checked in. The larger line wasn't moving at all now, only getting longer, and people were starting to yell. When we finally got up to the counter after waiting over an hour we handed the guy our passports and he had our bag on the conveyor belt in 30 seconds. We were ready; he was ready. It took no time at all. Why was this line so ridiculous? We did some soul searching on the issue and could only deduce that Germans, despite being maybe the most avid world travelers as a culture, are somehow just plain bad at it.
This was supposed to be a big exciting trip with friends visiting from back home in the Pacific Northwest. We'd tried to reserve huts for this specific hiking trip in the Alps during the spring of 2017, and found that everything for that summer was already long booked out. So, when some friends said they wanted to make their way to visit us the following summer, we proposed properly planning ahead and making the hut hiking trip a group excursion. All was well and good until the Endless Banana decided they'd rather reproduce than go hiking, but we empathized with their aching biological clocks and baby bits and didn't take it personally. Numbers were dwindling, but our good boy Uncle Sean still wanted to come along, so we squared away the hut reservations when they opened up in February. A week before the trip in early August, a Shakespearian tragedy befell Uncle Sean and his trip to Europe was thwarted. Our Ultimate German Adventure to Share With Americans™ was now just another standard adventure of Kirb and Mazz. We're sick of those!
Our flight brought us into Salzburg, where we caught a cheap hour-long bus back into Germany to the town of Berchtesgaden, our hub of operations for the weekend. Berchtesgaden is very Bavarian in all the right ways, with cute alpine architecture and the mountains pookin' out in every direction. After giving the town a good wander we decided that the afternoon was going to be best spent farting around on a putt-putt golf course with some radlers (that's half beer, half lemonade for the uninitiated). When dinner time rolled around, the restaurant at our hotel served up the single best Schweinshaxe (roasted pig knuckle) we've had so far in Europe, as well as some very nice venison stew with spätzle. The beers were large and refreshing, and plentiful. We had to be up early the next morning to hit the trail, so we spent the evening in our hotel room watching a German game show, and were happy to learn that we could follow along just fine with our limited German language skills.
We'd read about this trail in our Cicerone book Walking in the Bavarian Alps, Route 68 - A Three-Day Hike Through Berchtesgaden National Park:
“This tour from the Königssee to the Wimbachtal offers some of the most stunning scenery to be seen anywhere in the Bavarian Alps. The lake is certainly one of Germany’s most beautiful (in the opinion of the authors the most beautiful) and is a fitting introduction to the National Park which has been formed around it. All of the huts that are used as overnight quarters during the tour are supremely situated and would make pleasant bases for longer stays. The walking is fairly easy (Grade 2 or an ‘easy’ Grade 3) but some stretches are quite long or steep.”
To get to the trailhead we took a bus from Berchtesgaden to Königssee, where we could buy boat tickets for a ride to the other side of the lake. The tourist town built on the lake was virtually empty in the early morning, but the boats filled quickly. These boats have electric motors that them to move silently through the water. The valley was perfectly still until one of the boatmen took out a trumpet and played a song. The notes echoed through the mountains and impressively returned shortly after. The boat landed at St. Bartholomä, a baroque Roman Catholic church built on the waterfront in 1697. The structure is now an inn, and a popular day trip destination in the area.
The trail leads you south away from the church and through wildflower fields along the side of the lake until it begins to switchback steeply up a wooded area called the Hochstieg. As we made our way up and up for an hour straight we were sweating profusely, both from the warm morning temperatures and the few-too-many Bavarian beers the night before. At the top of the ridge the trail flattens out and takes you past an abandoned cabin and through a forest. The hike is pleasant for a while, until you reach a massive set of rocky switchbacks that lead seemingly up an entire mountain in one go.
You're really grateful to be finished with that part, and at the top the wilderness seems to explode with new life. Though you're done with switchbacks now, the trail keeps going steadily up, and by the time it finally levels out and then begins to descend into a lush valley your body is thanking you for not forcing it uphill anymore. The trail winds around a corner and you're struck by the image of Kärlinger Haus, a perfect alpine cabin sitting in a pristine green valley silhouetted by mountain peaks.
Though we're still bitter about the fact that it's illegal to bring your own tent and do proper backpacking in the German wilderness, there are some definite advantages to the hut hiking system. You only have to bring along clothes, toiletries, and water, as your food and lodging are taken care of by the huts, so you can keep your pack weight light. The beds have only a bottom sheet, pillow, and blanket; you're supposed to bring your own lightweight sleeping bag liner along with you to quarantine the hiker grime and stink inside your own sleep sleeve.
Not long after we arrived at the hut the weather turned and began dumping rain. We were happy we did not have to hike up the switchbacks in it. We had sprung for a "bedroom," which had two shared bunk beds instead of the claustrophobic line of conjoined beds you were relegated to in the main sleeping areas. Our room was somehow the epicenter of all of the flies on Earth, and though Kirb opened the window and tried to be accommodating, it didn't take long before he grew weary of their reluctance to live free outdoors and proceeded to kill dozens and dozens of them until none remained. We hoped the people who would be sharing the room with us weren't Buddhists. They surprisingly never showed up, and we had a whole room to ourselves in the middle of high season.
Dinner at Kärlinger Haus was an option of beef rice for €13 a plate or some sort of kitchen sink vegetarian noodle dish for €11, which we chose. It had some sort of flavor, and the portion size was large, which was really its strong point. Everyone ate in a spacious wooden lodge room with big communal tables, and everyone was speaking German and not particularly interacting, so we devoured our carbs and called it an early night.
The one big complaint about Kärlinger Haus was that a lot of people could fit in that place, and did, so everything felt crowded and there was inevitably a big line to do anything, like eat, bathe, or poop. Hot water ran out before half the people could use the showers. Kirb took one anyway and that water was icy cold. The €10 breakfast buffet in the morning was a total shitshow, with mobs of people jockeying for position to get some stale bread, cheese slices, and cold cuts. The hut was completely run on the honor system, which was a novel concept and felt quaint, if easily exploitable. Everything you got to eat or drink was written, by you, on the back of a coaster, and at the end of your stay you tallied it all up and paid for it before hitting the trail. There was an old German couple really hardcore complaining to a young employee, and we wished we could fully understand what their particular problem was with the hut (old Germans have statistically the most problems of any demographic and are quick to let you know about these problems and that you are one of them).
The second leg of the trail takes you down past the lake below Kärlinger Haus and then back up into the trees. Before long you're above the tree line and across the border into Austria, and all the lush grass has been replaced by gray stone. This area is called the Steinernes Meer, or Stone Sea. Now it feels like you're walking through Mordor, with nothing but unforgiving rock in all directions. There are two routes one could take to the next hut, Ingolstädter Haus. One is more direct and avoids the Steinernes Meer, and the other takes you several hours to a third hut called Riemann Haus. From there, the trail takes you back through the Stone Sea on a different route to your final destination, like a big V. As this was a proper hiking trip, we chose the longer, more scenic route. Knowing our halfway point was a hut that would have water, we drank unflinchingly as we made our way over the rocky crags.
We arrived at Riemann Haus for lunch after hiking over 3 hours, descending down a rocky path to find it perched on a cliff side overlooking the valley. We'd packed things for ourselves to eat, but were troubled to find that the hut had no drinking water and charged €4 per 1.5 liter bottle. We begrudgingly shilled out for one, ate quickly, and got back to climbing on the rocks.
Here's the thing about trail descriptions and the difficulty levels described therein: they are totally subjective. Many would argue that the first day's hike and its strenuous switchbacks were more difficult than the endless rock-walking of the second day, but those people aren't Mazz. She hates walking on rocks, and hiking that puts an emphasis on balance and not falling over is much more difficult for her than walking up hills for a long time. After hours of traversing boulders to get to Riemann Haus, the prospect of several more hours walking back over them was daunting, and she regularly and loudly pined for a proper trail. To make matters worse, the constant climbing up and down boulders put massive stain on her shit knee, and even though she had remembered to bring her brace along, it wasn't doing all that much to dampen the shock of the Stone Sea. Her mood soured.
When we finally got a view of Ingolstädter Haus perched on a saddle high in the mountains it was both exciting and disheartening. You get the view with at least another hour of rock climbing in front of you, and it feels like no matter how much you walk you never get any closer. The sense of refuge from the harsh environment and the accomplishment you feel when you finally stroll up to the hut after scrambling over rocks for 7-1/2 hours is immense.
We went to check in, and were gutted to find that this hut also had no potable drinking water, and that if you wanted hydration either after this hike or during the one the next day, you'd need to shill out €4 a bottle again. The woman at reception asked us if we wanted to buy breakfast for the following morning, and we replied that we weren't sure because we were getting dangerously low on money and had a few more days on the trail, and we might need to make some hard decisions between buying food and having enough water. She looked at us like a couple homeless people who had scurried up the mountain and found their way to her posh mountain lodge. We explained our cash situation, and she informed us that we could use our bank card like an ATM there and get some cash back. This changed everything. Our moods brightened instantly. We went right out onto the porch and started contentedly drinking cold beers and eating a massive spread of surprisingly good Bavarian food. This was the alpine hut experience we had searched for. The trek to get here was tough, but the payoff was spectacular. It just wasn't cheap.
Some other hikers on the trail had told us that Ingolstädter Haus was supposed to be one of the nicest huts in the Alps, and it felt like it. The place was gorgeous and pristine, and situated in such an improbable location. Everything here needed to be helicoptered in, and they appeared to have their own chopper parked out back. Unlike Kärlinger Haus, this place was full but never felt overcrowded, and eating and hanging out here felt more like being in an awesome rural restaurant than in a big summer camp cafeteria. Their offerings for breakfast were better as well, with scrambled eggs and bacon, a full yogurt and muesli station, and sweet breads and jam, as well as the regular German cold cut station. For €3 extra you could make yourself a pack lunch to-go from the items in the buffet, which we took advantage of.
Mazz was still rattled from the Stone Sea the day before, and was not looking forward to more of the same. We could see from the elevation map in our book that the area not far past Ingolstädter Haus was going to get real steep. The path to get to this area was plenty rocky, and we slowly made our way along until we caught sight of the ridge we were going to have to cross next. At the trail junction sign, the way to Wimbachgrieshütte, our next destination, had been etched with the words, "Gott! Nichts ist schöner!" We speak enough German to know this meant, "God! Nothing is more beautiful!" This gave Kirb a warm feeling in his hiking bits.
Just getting up to the foot of the ridge was the steepest the trail had been so far, and when Mazz got a look at people having to boulder up the nearly vertical rock face with hands and feet she just lost it. When we'd found ourselves in a similar situation in Norway a few weeks before, there wasn't much of a choice than to move forward – we'd come too far and we just had to do the damn thing, no matter how much Mazz hated it. This time, there was a choice. We could keep taking the trail back to Kärlinger Haus and hike down the way we'd come up. It wasn't an ideal plan, as it meant at least 8 hours on the trail and a 1900-meter (6243-foot) descent in one day. We were planning to stay at Wimbachgrieshütte overnight and finish the final 5 miles downhill the following day, which our book had recommended. If we left the mountain now, we'd have to find a new place to stay last-minute in high season in Berchtesgaden. None of that mattered. Mazz was not climbing up that fucking ridge. She apologized to Kirb, who was dejected but understood completely, and started scooting down the steep dirt trail on her bottom until we were back at the junction and on our way down the Alp.
Walking down that far, that steeply, in one day, totally sucks. It was still all rocks until we got back to Kärlinger Haus, and they nearly got on top of Mazz at one point, but once we hit a regular trail again things went briskly. We noticed before too long that several of the groups we'd seen at the huts the previous two nights were doing this route of their own volition, and it made us less self-conscious about conceding to the ridge. The view of Königsee after 8 hours of hiking was heavenly, and Kirb tore off his clothes the second he got to the shore and jumped in the serene, emerald lake. Virtually everyone we'd seen on the trail that day ended up doing the same.
We stunk from days of sweat, and people on the boat clearly didn't want us to sit next to them, so we sat next to some kids because they stink too and don't care about that kind of stuff. Back on the other side of the lake with cell reception, we checked some sites to see what was available for lodging and found a nice-looking place with one room left called Alpenhut Kronprinz. Those showers felt pretty good, my dudes. All we ever want after a big hike is a beer and a cheeseburger, and as luck would have it, that's exactly what the hotel bar at Kronprinz specialized in. We high-fived and ate some ludicrously sized, impossible-to-hold burgers and had several more delicious Hofbrauhaus Berchtesgaten beers. This was literally the only kind of beer anyone sold in town or in the huts, which was just fine. Over those several days in Bavaria, every time Kirb took a sip he found himself involuntarily wanting to chug the entire beer. We fell asleep at 9:00pm mere moments after sinking into the plush, king size bed.
When we woke, the Alps were covered in clouds and everything was dusted with a mist of rain. We were glad that we didn't have to hike down the mountain in it, and instead got to sit in the hotel restaurant eating egg sandwiches and pastries, leisurely drinking coffee while admiring the haze on the peaks.
The weather was also dreary back in Salzburg, so we killed time in shops and cafes while waiting for our afternoon activity. Salzburg is intensely proud of Mozart (and the Sound of Music, for what it's worth) and is considered one of the great cities in the world for classical music, so we found a concert to attend in the afternoon for a little culture. Though we thought we were buying tickets for some chamber music, the concert at Salzburger Residenz turned out to be a single guy playing clavier in a small room full of statues. The clavier he played was a perfect recreation of the same type Mozart played in the late 1700s. We were surprised to learn after one of the pieces that Mozart had composed and performed that very piece in the same palace we were sitting when he was 5 years old.
With a little Austrian culture and history under our belt, we had just enough time to get a little more of that good Austrian food before it was time to head to the airport. After some schnitzel, a smoked duck salad, and some dark beers, we were ready to say, "Auf Wiedersehen" to Bavaria and its many rocks and hills.
So what'd we learn this week, troop? Mazz learned she may not have the true heart of a mountaineer, and that future hiking trips are going to have to be more thoroughly vetted to ensure the trails don't exceed her designated rock allotment. Kirb learned he's filled up his entire punch card of putting Mazz in dangerous alpine conditions and if he does it one more time she will end him completely. We learned that you can choose to have babies instead of going on awesome hiking trips in the Alps, but that may not be the right choice for everyone, specifically us. We learned that the big line at the airport is the fault of the German citizen. But we also learned that if there's a ridiculous house to be built in a place that absolutely shouldn't have a house on it, the Germans (or Austrians) will be the ones to build it, and that place is going to be pretty cool and have beer.