Maximiliansweg Day 3: SonnenAlm to Marquartstein

Day 3: Friday July 15

This is the day when we began to doubt the story that we were following the king's footsteps.

Dawn was gorgeous in all directions...

SonnenAlm

The SonnenAlm wasn't directly on the Maximiliansweg, but we reconnected with the namesake trail after a mile or so.

Then fog rolled in:

We turned off the main road onto the trail to Marquartstein, which was in the same direction as the Kampenwand, a wall of pointy peaks:

After several switchbacks, we arrived at the saddle where we discovered that Leslie has the same life-preserving fear of heights as me.

Sure, Maximilian II might have hiked up here, but we have doubts that he and his entourage crossed over this spot. There was enough fog that, peering over the steep edge of the saddle, we couldn't see down to the trail on the other side. 

As we contemplated what to do, a family of three approached. I asked auf deutsch if they had opinions about the trail for those with Hoehenangst. The dad encouraged us to turn around: "You look well prepared," he said, pointing to our boots and hiking poles, "but if you have a fear of heights, you should turn around now, while you still can, because there are spots ahead where you cannot. We have enough accidents around here as it is." So we headed back down as the papa and mama pulled out a rope and prepared to belay their 5-year-old daughter down to the trail on the other side. 

Happily, because we were in Germany, there were multiple other options for hiking down to Marquartstein. Our detour added a few extra miles to our intended distance, but was beautiful and quite manageable for the acrophobes. The fog stayed with us most of the day.

Moo

Zygaena transalpina

Eurasian white admiral

Apparently moths were the last things I deemed photo-worthy that day. After making our way down the mountain, we eventually emerged from woods into a field a few miles outside of Marquartstein. We passed through a bustling Biergarten/playground that was clearly a popular place for families to hang out on a Friday afternoon, then continued downhill until, at last, with the sun finally shining, we arrived at our charming hotel in Pettendorf, just north of Marquartstein.

Ta da! 10.72 miles.

Maximiliansweg Day 2: Hochrieshuette to SonnenAlm

Day 2: Thursday July 14

The goal of the day was to hike down from Hochries to Aschau, then up Kampenwand to the SonnenAlm. 

Another view from the Hochrieshuette--the field where paragliders launch

Heading down from the hut, we greeted our first cows of the day:

Looking back past the cows up to the hut:

Then it was down down down through the woods...

...with an eventual view of the Chiemsee (which we also saw much of the previous day from Hochries) in the background, with Aschau below the trail:

We learned that the elk in the woods above Aschau speak Boarisch Bairisch Bayrisch Bayerisch and don't like noisy surprises at dawn and dusk:

The town of Aschau presumably grew around the castle on the hill, Hohenaschau, which was first built in the 12th century. We paused in Aschau for lunch, after which Leslie and I parted ways for a few hours. While I hiked up to the SonnenAlm, she visited the castle, then took the gondola lift up. 

I enjoyed more Chiemsee views on the hike up. 

It was a hot day; even the cows were feeling the heat:

There's probably a word for a photo of a selfie-in-progress...

Cows below the SonnenAlm. This is what it means for the hills to be alive with the sound of music...

We ate dinner outside, but inside, the dining room was illuminated by elk antlers:

Ta da! 11 miles.

 

Maximiliansweg Day 1: Brannenburg to Hochrieshuette

Day 1: Wednesday July 13

We caught an early train to Brannenburg and by 8:45 am were taking our first proof-we-were-here photos in front of the Brannenburg train depot.

Leslie and I are both contestant alums of Durham NC's Beaver Queen Pageant (she as Beaverella, I as Adélie Pygoscelis Beaver), so of course we paused for a photo next to Brannenburg's Biber-Apotheke.

The Inn River flows in a remarkably straight, tidily edged, German-controlled route between Brannenburg and Nussdorf.

As we headed past Nussdorf and up into the woods, a garden display issued a warning to snails:

Why look, in the middle of the woods past Nussdorf--it's the historic pilgrimage church, Maria Heimsuchung:

One of the few signs we saw for the Maximiliansweg. The trail overlaps with the trans-Europe E4 trail (Portugal to Cyprus). The red and white striped blazes aren't specific to the Maximiliansweg--they just indicate this is an alpine route.

Look, way up there--our destination for the day, the Hochrieshuette:

We saw a lot of butterflies as we emerged from the gravel trail onto the road toward Duft:

Aglais io, the European peacock butterfly

Argynnis paphia, the silver-washed fritillary

(Not a butterfly)

This was the first trail sign we noticed that mentioned our destination for the day, Hochries:

The higher we climbed, the more mountains came into view...

The trail went up up up...

Bayern looked pretty flat to the north, thanks to glaciers carving their way out of the Alps during the last ice age:

Sometimes Alms have drinks and food for people; other times, they just have cows lying in manure.

More up: 

The bees and butterflies were very obliging all day:

More up--the last few meters before arriving at the Hochrieshuette:

Some people arrive at the hut via gondola, which is probably easier on the knees but not as spectacular.

Johannisbeer Schorle (half black currant juice, half seltzer) never tasted so good: 

The views at the top were expansive. Flat to the north, mountains to the south.

"Hut" means something different in German than in English. This hut was built by the DAV and was spacious and comfy. They even had showers (unlimited cold water for free, 5 minutes hot water for 3.50 Euros). I ate Kaiserschmarrn for dinner, and was disappointed to discover it was fluffy--more like cubes of French toast--rather than thick crepe-like (the way Tante Puppi makes it--and, come to think of it, way the Rischart coffee shop in Munich's Marienplatz makes it too). This led to a conversation, auf deutsch, with another hiker who had ordered Kaiserschmarrn, about regional variations in batter prep. Apparently the cubed French toast-like version is fancier than the Munich version--although if I had to guess, I'd guess it was really cubed French toast stored in the freezer and pan-sauteed to order. 

Simsee

Alpenglow illuminating the treetops...

Ta da! 9.83 miles.

Maximiliansweg: Introductory

Catching up with blog backlog!

In July, our friend Leslie arrived in Steinebach, and after a couple of days to recover from jetlag and do the requisite pre-hike hike to Andechs...

Pilgrimage to pork knuckle

...we hopped on the S8 and then a regional train--all courtesy of the 9-Euro/month Deutsche Bahn ticket (thanks again, German government, for subsidizing hundreds of miles of point-to-point hiking this summer!)--and arrived in Brannenburg, ready to take on a 7-day, 85-mile hike to Berchtesgaden, with a leisurely bonus 8th day at the end to be tourists.

Our route was based on the last several stages of the Maximiliansweg, a hiking route created in 1991 by the Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV). The route was inspired by a 5-week trip that King Maximilian II of Bayern took in 1858 from Lindau to Berchtesgaden. I figured if Maximilian could hike the route with his entourage and without any of the snazzy lightweight hiking gear we use nowadays, how challenging could it be? One website said he hiked it ("a path that was first walked by a king"--apparently he blazed the trail himself); others said he traveled by carriage and horseback and occasionally on foot. There were, actually, not a whole lot of details available on the interwebs about Maximilian's actual route, but the DAV trail it had its own purple MAX symbol in Komoot, and there were enough we'll-tote-your-luggage-while-you-walk-in-a-king's-footsteps companies advertising tours, that I figured it couldn't be too strenuous.

It turned out that having trail symbol on Komoot doesn't mean people know much about the trail. The trail had no blazes, and no identifiable trail symbol (like, e.g., the Jakobsweg has, with its radiating sun-like scallop shell, or the Querweg, with its half white/half red diamond on a yellow field). Signage was sparse on the days when we strictly followed the trail. We saw two plain metal Maximiliansweg signs on our first day, and multiple mentions of the Maximilian horse trail on signposts on our penultimate day, but otherwise little evidence that the trail was a named thing. Talking to folks in villages and en route, we found not a single person who had heard of the Maximiliansweg. So we take as apocryphal the suggestion that Maximilian hiked/carriaged/horsebacked his way across the route named after him, and suspect the DAV put together an approximate route based mostly on connecting the snazziest peaks. This also made it easier for us to detour off-route starting on Day 3, for reasons that will become apparent in the next few blog posts.

The route we ultimately hiked is this, which includes good stretches of the official DAV Maximiliansweg plus some acrophobe-approved alternate routes: 

Whirlwind placeholder

I have a bazillion photos waiting to be uploaded, and I'm over a month behind with blogging. So here's a place-holder to remind me of what I need to fill in...

On June 23, S and I took a train to Immenstadt, hiked to Oberstaufen, and took a train home. On July 8, we took a train to Oberstaufen, spent two days hiking to Lindau via Scheidegg, and took a train home. The sectional Steinebach-to-Lindau hike is now complete, yay.

On July 10, friend LF arrived from Durham, and three days later, we took a train to Brannenburg and spent seven days hiking to Berchtesgaden. We have doubts that the Maximiliansweg actually retraces Maximilian II's 1858 route, but more on that later. 

Other friends from Durham visited us at the end of June. They arrived almost over jetlag, having already spent a week in London, so they were able to jump right into our guided nine-day intro to Bayern. This included...

Hanging out at the lake in Steinebach...

Taking a ferry to Diessen...

Visiting Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne, admiring the ceramic exterior of the Museum Brandhorst, eating lunch at the Viktualienmarkt, climbing the church tower of Alter Peter, eating Kaiserschmarrn at the Rischart coffee house, and enjoying the Blauer Reiter artwork at the Lenbachhaus museum...

Remembering the horrific stain of Germany's not-so-distant past by visiting KZ Dachau...

Hiking from Garmisch-Partenkirchen through the Partnachklamm up to crazy King Ludwig II's hunting castle, Schachenhaus, and back down again...

Following up on the Lenbachhaus museum by visiting Murnau to see the Gabriele Muenter Haus...

...And touring the gardens and Neue Schloss at Schloss Schleissheim in Unterschleissheim.

And with that summary complete, now I'm off to bake a Shaker Lemon Pie on a ridiculously hot day, to introduce neighbors to the concept of Pie.