Hiking in Berchtesgaden

FRIDAY: 2 trips to the Alps just weren't enough, why not go once more? This weekend was a trip to Berchtesgaden, in the Bavarian Alps (near Munich). I've heard that Berchtesgaden is really beautiful, so I wanted to check it out. For this trip, Colin, Evan, Kung, and Matt (Evan's friend from Vancouver) came. Me, Colin, Evan and Matt hiked, while Kung hung around the city and saw the sights (he also slept in the back seat of the car for 2 days because of a lack of hostels). We drove from Wuerzburg down to Munich, where we stopped for an hour or so to walk around. One really cool thing about the car we rented was that it had GPS onboard, so you could type in the exact address where you want to go and it would give you turn-by-turn directions. It even had parking lots programmed in! It literally took us door-to-door, and we would've been pretty lost without it in Munich. We got all the way to Berchtesgaden, and just found a spot to camp on a quiet side road in the forest.

SATURDAY: We were up pretty early the next day. We parked the car, gave Kung the key, and took the bus up to the trailhead. The hike up was about 6 hours, including breaks, and had some pretty awesome views. The trail was pretty rough - a lot of it went over hard, sharp, jagged rocks with deep crevasses. Parts of the trail were more scrambling than hiking.

Our destination was Ingolstaedter Haus, at 2132m elevation. This is one of the coolest places I've been. It's remote, and not lift-accessed, so there's no tourists, only Austrian and German hikers. We were the only native English speakers there. Oh, and to get to it you hike over the border into Austria. The actual border is along a ridge that we hiked. Anyways, hiking is very civilized in Europe; this hotel has running water, showers, a full kitchen that serves food and beer, and electricity. So we weren't really roughing it. The only downside was that they crammed 36 people into a room designed for maybe 10, but it wasn't that bad.

SUNDAY: Next day we hiked down on a different route. We passed another mountain hut, descended through a very steep gulley, and came out just above the Konigsee. The water is amazingly green and clear. It's clean enough to drink - they only allow electric boats on the water. We went for a swim in the lake (not too cold), and then got into St. Bartholema, a super-touristy town. It was a bit of a shock after being in the mountains all weekend. From there, we took an electric boat into the town of Konigsee, and walked back to the car. The weather had been beautifully sunny all weekend, and all of a sudden it started to pour with rain, and there was thunder, so we were pretty lucky. We drove back through Munich, dropped Matt off for some more sightseeing, and were in Wuerzburg by 11pm. That was a great trip for sure. Now I've been to 5 Alps (Swiss, French, Italian, Bavarian, Austrian), so I'm pretty happy.