Finally, ten months after I had the idea, I’m finally ready to fly to New Zealand. It was a lot of preparation and planning, but I can’t wait to get started.

This is where I will be the next few months:

It’s already close to the end of q3, and I haven’t written anything about my activities earlier this year. After an active first quarter I continued the streak of great outdoor weekends. When I wrote down the weekends I noticed that I didn’t go to a single location I hadn’t been to before

7./8.4. Lizumer Hütte

A snowshoeing weekend in Austria, left Friday afternoon and walked up to the hut.

On Saturday we climbed Torspitze in thick fog, a fun tour even without any view. On Sunday the weather cleared up and we had perfect sunshine on our way back down to Lager Walchen, where we had parked the car.

21.4. Dreiburgenland Marathon

I wrote about it before, so no need to repeat myself.

1.5. Herzogstand and Heimgarten

Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt and wore it out. But Herzogstand is still a fun hike, especially the ridge over to Heimgarten. So I did it once more with a few fellow hikers. Weather was mixed, but the good company and the ice cream at the end of the day in Ohlstadt made it still enjoyable.

12./13.5. Kampenwand

Another popular hike. I don’t even remember how many times I’ve done Kampenwand. Weather was crappy, but it was a fun group (again with the Wayfarers Munich, Bartosz brought his whole family). At the top of the cable car we stopped for some food before we continued to the self-service hut just a few hundred meters away. A few overly motivated hikers went up Kampenwand in the rain, but I was lazy and stayed in the hut and spent some time with the Kindle.

On Sunday the whole group made the trip up Kampenwand. On the way down I noticed a sign pointing east to another way down “nur für Geübte” (~only if you know what you are doing). I decided to give it a try and it was definitely a fun option. I had to descent two snow fields on my bum and to catch up with the others I ran through the snow on the flat bits. Overall this allowed me to reach the hut under Kampenwand at exactly the same time the others did via the shorter route.

20.5. Rossstein, Buchstein & Leonhardstein

I joined the Wayfarers for another hike, and again it was a repeat performance. But Rossstein and Buchstein are among my favorite peaks and adding Leonhardstein made it a bit more challenging. I parked in Kreuth, where I arrived a bit late, so I had to run a few kilometers to get to the meeting place. While walking four of us chatted about doing Karwendellauf and just for fun decided to race up Rossstein as a benchmark and to see how fast we can to the ascent. I was pretty happy with my 62min from the parking lot to the peak, but it meant I had to wait more than an hour at the hut before the last of the others showed up.

Then we quickly scrambled up to Buchstein, to tick of the peak once more, before we descended north through wet snow and slush towards Leanhardstein. The ascent of Leonhardstein was easy but with the previous climbs in our legs we were not especially fast to get there. Therefore parts of the group went directly to Kreuth while a handful did the climb. We barely made it back down in time for a Radler and to catch the latest bus. Lucky for me, because otherwise I would have had to shuttle 15 people in my car to Tegernsee

26./27.5. Hochstaufen & Zwiesel

We started fairly late on Saturday, because we had only a short hike up to Reichenhaller Haus. Weather was perfect and after we checked-in at the hut we went on to the peak of Hochstaufen where we enjoyed a great sunset. I forgot to bring my camera and it was a shame. The reflections of the setting sun in Chiemsee looked great.

The next day we got up early and continued the trail west over the ridge from Hochstaufen to Zwiesel and then a bit further before we turned south to get back down to Bad Reichenhall. This is where the annoying part of the hike started. First we stopped at a hut I forgot the name of but they were out of Kaiserschmarrn, but at least they had some cake.

Then we spent a few more hours walking along boring forst trails and roads until we finally reached the train station, just in time to catch a train back home.

10.6. New York

Got to travel to New York for work and spend the weekend walking around.

30.6. Fockenstein

To end the quarter I organized another hike with my colleagues, this time from Lengries over Fockenstein to Bad Wiessee. Weather was scorching hot which made the hike harder than it really was, but it was fun anyway…

For years I wanted to do Jubiläumsgrat and I finally found a partner fit enough and not scared of heights to join me. To be honest, I was the less experienced one on this tour, which is nice for a change. Read more »

Last October I decided to register for a marathon early in the year. This should create a little added motivation to keep doing sport in the winter, which mostly worked. I selected the Dreiburgenland Marathon in Thurmansbang. From the information on the (extremly ugly) website is was cleary that it wasn’t a flat race course. But I totally underestimated the hills.

To me this looked aceptable at first, but now that it’s over I’m glad I didn’t know how hard the climbs would be, before I registered

Anyway, the Dreiburgenland Marathon takes a mostly scenic route, initially steep uphill into the woods west of Thurmansbang. It stays in the woods for roughly 7km, followed by roughly 7km along a road. Then it circles around Dreiburgensee for roughly 1.5km, continues along a road for a bit and finishes with 4km over small roads and trails back to Thurmansbang.

The route was great with views you could never have in a city marathon. But there were barely any spectators away from the start/finish area the first time around and zero on the second round. This lack of external motivation made it a bit harder, but I worked around it by listening to music most of the time.

Overall a great marathon, highly recommended when you are looking for one near Munich…

It has been an extremely active first quarter for me and this is one of the reasons I didn’t write here for quite some time. I don’t remember a year when I have been on so many hikes and thanks to the Wayfareres I had to plan only two of the hikes myself

31.12/1.1. Lengrieser Huette / Fockenstein

On the 31st it was an easy, short hike up to Lenggrieserhütte where I had a cozy New Year’s party with the Wayfarers (bonus points for Steve’s guitar playing!). Next day we added a hike to Fockenstein. Snow was deep, wet and heavy, so walking even in snowshoes was pretty hard, but we made it and after some smallish navigation problems even made it back to Lengries.

6.-8.1. Wendelstein

I’m absolutely not religious but I love all the long weekends we get thanks to the many holidays. So a few days later Epiphany created a three day weekend and the Wayfarers went on a hike around Wendelstein.

The plan was simple: from Brannenburg up to Mitteralm where we stayed the first night and then on to Siglhütte and back down to catch the BOB.

The first day went exactly like planned, it was an easy hike up an easy trail. We had a great evening at Mitteralm and an even better morning. This was by far the best breakfast buffet I have ever seen at a hut in the Alps. Great place to stay, highly recommended.

Next day we missed the shorted trail towards Siglhütte and had to descend a good bit back down towards Brannenburg before we turned south and continued around Wendelstein. As an added difficulty, one member of the group didn’t know the difference between snowshoes and snow boots. Obviously, we had to wait frequently for her to catch up, but she did, which was a feat. The sun set when we were a few hundred meters above Siglhütte, but the hut was covered in so much snow that we at first missed it, went ti Siglalm, then descended another 100-200m to another alm until we finally found the hut.

It was tiny but cozy and after another evening of great cooking (grilled cheese sandwich!) we went back down to the train station the next morning and returned to Munich.

29.1. Rotwandhaus

This one day hike to Rotwandhaus looked like a crappy hike. It was a dark and cloudy day and at first I wanted to skip the hike. In retrospect I’m glad I didn’t. When we made it nearly all the way to Rotwandhaus the clouds around us thinned and a few minutes later we were above them and got great sunshine and even better views. After a great Kaiserschmarrn we rented some sleds to ride back down.

4./5.2. Benediktenwand

A week later another great hike with the Wayfarers. I think this was the coldest weekend this winter and there was tons of snow. We took the BOB to Obergries and followed an easy trail uphill. We stopped for lunch at a hut (sorry, forgot the name) and still had plenty of time to make it to Probstalmhütte, where we stayed for the night. The hut had no electricity, so we had to use candles and were cooking on a wood stove. But at least it warmed the main room enough to make it comfortable.

The next morning it was a clear, perfect morning but even colder than the day before. It wasn’t far up to Benediktenwand and we climbed up quickly. Problem was, that the top part was covered in solid ice and it didn’t feel safe to continue on snowshoes (I think it would have been easy with crampons and an ice axe…) so we turned around roughly 50-100m from the peak. Anyway, still a great day, lots of sunshine and perfect powder.

11.3. Rossstein

The next few weekends I was busy (traveled to the UK and on-call) but on March 11th weather was great, so I decided to climb Rossstein again, one of my favorite peaks, close but still pretty steep and great views.

I had hoped that I could do it without snowshoes. But when I arrived I realized that there was still a ton of snow around, so I got the snowshoes out of the trunk of my car and started walking. Weather was great, but nobody was around. The whole day I saw one guy going up and a couple on my way back down in roughly 4-5h. In the sun on top it was warm enough to sit in the t-shirt and enjoy the view, which I did for quite some time and nearly fell asleep – which got me my first sunburn of the year

17./18.3. Gampenkogel / Brechhorn

I think this was the first Wayfarer hike where we didn’t take the train. We drove to Userberg and made our way up to Sonnleitnerhütte, where we dumped our gear, had a long break and climbed Gaisberg just before the sun set.

After another entertaining evening, with plenty of food and booze (it was St. Patrick’s Day, but I couldn’t find any Guiness cans to take along ) we got going pretty early. The whole group climbed Gampenkogel, then we stopped at Brechhornhaus for some food where most people stayed while the crazy few continued to Brechhorn. Getting there and back was easy but it was getting late. So when we met up with the slackers, some of them had decided to take the gondola back down into the valley while the rest rushed down on snowshoes. The rushing didn’t help much, because we had a hard time finding the route, which meant that in the end we followed the poles of the gondola, later had to scramble down a few steep bits and finally ended up on the wrong side of a small creek. But we made it back to the car just a few minutes before sunset anyway…

25.3. Hochstaufen

A week later I decided on short notice to do another hike and picked Hochstaufen from my guide of winter hikes. 1200m of ascend and a lot of snow made it a hard but extremely fun hike. Given the amount of snow it was difficult to find the trail once we left the woods but we made it up anyway. And just in time for the summit photo the sun came out to reward us.

This is a sequel to last year’s Outdoor TODO list 2011.

Planned tours

2011 I hiked more than ever but it looks like I might easily top this in 2012. Thanks to some lucky circumstances I was able to take 17 days of vacation into 2012. My current plan to get rid of them is to take 40 at the end of the year and leave cold Germany in November for New Zealand to walk the southern half of the Te Araroa.

Unlike last year, holidays create a lot of 4-day weekends this year. I don’t have any specific plans yet. But from the top of my head I would like to do at least one multi-day trip to Hoher Tauern and one to Karwendel. And I would like to finally ascend Half Dome.

Additionally, I registered for a marathon in April (Dreiburgenland Marathon) and I’m thinking about adding two more (Karlsruhe & Munich).

Gear

Currently I’m pretty happy with my gear. I might upgrade my Laser Competition if I do the Te Araroa. So no urgent plans to go shopping and I will keep my resolution from 2011: get rid of at least one old piece of equipment, before buying a new piece.

Tuesday, November 1 was a public holiday, had a decent weather forecast and I couldn’t come up with a better plan. So I decided to hike from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the summit of Zugspitze. Read more »

From last Sunday to Tuesday I walked a short section of the Pennine Way. If (like me) you haven’t heard of it:

The Pennine Way National Trail, 268 miles of chasing the Pennine Mountain tops along the rugged backbone of England, from the Peak District through the Yorkshire Dales and over Hadrian’s Wall to the Cheviots. Amongst the finest upland walking in England.

We didn’t start right on the Pennine Way but took the bus to Barnard Castle instead, because the only thing that is worse than English weather is her majesty’s public transport system. The walk itself was nice. Very well marked and easy to follow. The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that we were mostly walking through farmland and it never really felt like getting away from civilization. Given the location this is hardly a surprise but worth mentioning.

Yesterday we went walking along Hadrian’s Wall with great weather. We passed Sycamore Gap (aka the Robin Hood Tree), Vercovicium and a few very nice cliffs that surely have a name, too, but I can’t find it. Afterwards we enjoyed a nice burger in The Twice Brewed Inn just a few hundred meters away from Hadrian’s Wall.

View 2011-08-19 11:05 in a larger map

I had planned a two-day hike in the Hoher Tauern region. The weather forecast on Friday was bad, but I packed some of my gear anyway. On Saturday it looked a little better so I quickly got up, packed the remaining bits and pieces, filled a large thermos cup with coffee and hit the road at 7:30. Read more »

Right now I have more tours to write about than time to do the writing. Therefore this time only a short report about two tours, three and one week ago. Read more »