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 »

In the last two weeks I experimented a little more with my dehydrator. My first experiment was to find something meaty to add to mashed potatoes. In my local super market I bought three brands of sausages, cut them in small pieces and dried them. Experiment two was to dry pre-cut salmon and ham and see how tasty the result would be.

I used two sausages each from the 3 brands on the left, cut one in roughly 2cm long pieces and the other in 1cm thick, diagonally cut pieces because I wasn’t sure how well the dehydration will work.

Observation 1: Not surprisingly, there is a lot of fat in sausages. Even the ones which look like mostly meat contain a lot. So after 30 minutes I removed everything from the dehydrator and put paper towel under the pieces to soak up the fat

Observation 2: It takes a long time to properly dry sausages. At first I ran the dehydrator at 70ºC for 6 hours, the sausages shrank a little but the meat bits still looked pretty juicy to me and felt soft. After another 6 hours the result were crunchy sausage bit.

Observation 3: Drying sausage is one of the few things were size doesn’t matter. Both cuts looked, felt and tasted the same.

Observation 4: You can dry Sauerkraut, too. I guess this is a German thing, but I had to try it. As you can see from the image below, I had some room in the dehydrator so I added Sauerkraut for the first drying run of 6 hours. The result was eatable, better than a lot of other trail food I have tried.

Dried bits of all three brands tasted great, crunchy and still meaty, my personal favorite were the dried A&P Schinkenknacker. Add some instant mashed potatoes and some dried Sauerkraut and you have a pretty yummy instant meal on the trail.

My second experiment took was less innovative. I bought slices of salmon and turkey ham.

I dried both at 70ºC for 6 hours. When I checked after 2-3 hours I noticed that the salmon stuck to the metal grill of the dehydrator, so again I removed it all and put a layer of baking paper in (yes, the pictures below are staged because I forgot to take pictures at first).

Both the salmon (picture on the left) and the ham (on the right) turned out pretty good. The salmon tasted a little too salty and I will check the salmon and make sure that it’s not seasoned the next time. At first the ham was extremely dry, like crisps. But after a day it had drawn some moisture from the air and hat the normal jerky consistency.

Improvements for next time: unseasoned salmon and reduce time for ham to 4-5 hours.

I’m always looking for additional ideas to try, so please let me know if you have any suggestions on what to dehydrate…

For some time I was looking for a bike mount to attach my Nexus S to my road bike. I couldn’t find one I liked and had already started manufacturing prototype of a DIY one with the help of a colleague who owns a RepRap. But last weekend I got lucky. I returned something else to my local outdoor dealer and noticed a flexible iPhone bike mount which looked like it could fit a Nexus S, too. I whipped out my phone and yes, it did fit. So now I am the happy owner of a Topeak iPhone drybag. You can get it from Amazon.com or Globetrotter.de.

A few weeks ago a colleague told me about a paragliding course he was about to attend with Fly for fun. This sounded like a great idea and a few minutes later I booked myself a two-day trial course.

The weather this weekend wasn’t great but still good enough for the course to take place.

Saturday morning 9:00 a small group of 5 met at Almhof Roswitha to receive a very short briefing before we walked roughly 500 meters to the nearby practice slope. One of us already had some experience and just needed to refresh his skills. Michael, our instructor, picked my wing to talk us through the setup and therefore I got the dubious honor to run down the hill first. I needed two or three tries to get the wing above me and make it down the hill.

I slowly got better but it took nearly two hours of continuos practice until I finally took off and flew for a few meters. We continued the practice until 13:30 and at the end everybody was able to fly for the task 20 or 30 meters and land safely. The only casualty was a cattle fence that slowed down one landing.

Sunday we met earlier. At first there was no wind at all but we practiced some no-wind starts which mostly went pretty well. The only notable exception was yours truly. I failed to slow down the wing enough so it overshot me, pulled me down face forward and I rolled over one shoulder. It must have looked epic because I heard a number of concerned comments.

Anyway, I survived and made a few more successful trips down the hill. We got a few short periods of good wind but there were long periods without any wind. According to Michael, everybody had surpassed the learning goal for the day so nobody was too unhappy when we called it a day once it started raining.

I had a great weekend and I’m thinking about adding another course soon..