Abstieg

Second day of our two-day hiking trip to Berchtesgaden National Park.

Yesterday we hiked to Blaueishütte mountain hut to stay there for the night in order to start early to get to the peak of Hochkalter. We managed to leave Blaueishütte (1,680 metres) around 7 o'clock in the morning (so not that early). We first had to ascend across a scree of fine pebbles and small rocks - perfect to lift your mood in the morning... After a short easy climb we reached Schöner Fleck (2,000 metres). I think Lena was rather shocked when she found out that the tour she planned had quite a number of not trivial and sometimes exposed climbing parts (although she knows how to climb - I don't). And I was fairly relieved when I realized that I'm able to compensate my lack of climbing technique with muscle strength. So we went on along the ridge, around Rotpalfen, across Kleinkalter (2,513 metres) to our main target Hochkalter (2,608 metres), which is the 5th highest mountain in Germany. And the ascent was really beautiful, scenic, demanding, but definitely within our abilities.

But what goes up must come down. And the descent on the other side of Hochkalter through Ofental ("oven valley") was everything but pretty. The first 800 metres of elevation we had to fight ourselfs through a desert of rocks and pebbles again. This left us with "just" another 1,000 metres of elevation to hike down through a foresty and rather boring area for nearly 10 kilometres.

It definitely was a perfect tour, though - not too ambitious, not too boring, great company!

The blip shows the Ofental rock desert, we had to descent through, from somewhere close to its lower end.

If you are interested, we did exactly this tour.