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Journal: |
Breakfast wasn't until 8am so I had a chance to sleep in after a
bad night resulting from a too-spicy pizza. I went down to
breakfast about 20 minutes early and logged onto their internet
terminal to quickly check email and then ate a hearty breakfast.
I think there may have been a basketball team staying in the hotel
because there were about eight very tall young guys there for
breakfast as well. I left the hotel around 9am and stopped in
at the railway station bakery to get some rolls for lunch before
walking through the town, admiring the outdoor gear shops along the
way. I would like to come back to Oberstdorf one day for a
week's outdoor activities. It seems to have everything for all
year round. I saw a couple of fit young guys coming back into
town on roller-skis after their morning exercise.
My route
out of town followed the Oybach River upstream, firstly through a
pretty gorge along a manicured trail. Further along the trail
emerged onto the flat valley floor of the classic U-shaped glacier
valley, with very steep sides and some superb waterfalls tumbling
down. The Via Alpina followed a narrow tree-lined country road
up the valley which I shared with a number of other walkers and
cyclists. Near the end of the valley the road began to climb
quite steeply towards a waterfall generating a huge plume of spray
that had been visible for some time. I passed a couple of the
mountain-bikers slowly pushing their bikes up the steep hill.
The waterfall was thundering into a churning pool and the spray
generated fell like rain on the surrounding area.
From the
waterfall I continued the climb up to a suspended valley, seemingly
roofed in with cloud, and with a small log cabin cafe, Kaseralpe, at
the end of the road. This was, apparently, the goal of most of
the mountain-bikers. I would guess they wouldn't have to pedal
once for the whole 12km back to Oberstdorf. My route continued
past Kaseralpe and climbed steeply along what seemed like an old
cart road, although I couldn't imagine any animal hauling a cart up
the consistently steep grade. Onwards and upwards it went into
the quiet clouds and the views disappeared. The cart track
ended and became a still-climbing single-track trail, but I was
making reasonable time and was starting to think of an early finish
at Prinz Luitpold Haus (PLH). I hadn't seen any other people
since Kaseralpe when, around 12:30pm, three guys emerged out of the
fog going the other way. The front guy was older than me and
small and wiry (reminding me of my American friend, John C, who
could easily be found on trails such as this) and wearing what
seemed like dark long-johns with a pair of short white lycra shorts
on the outside.....very fetching! They asked me where I was
headed and I told them, saying I should be able to make it easily
(only 7km away and half a day to do it). They laughed and said
"not easy" and then one of them explained that there had been an
avalanche on the trail and getting past it was especially "not
easy".
I bet they were laughing at me all the way down to
Oberstdorf, because the rest of the journey to PLH was very testing.
When I thought about it, they must have come from PLH and, assuming
they left around 8am, they had taken 4.5 hours to cover the 7km from
there. It ended up taking me just over 4.5 hours for that same
7km. I lost time on multiple steep snow slope crossings, made
more difficult by the fog because you not only had trouble choosing
the route, but you couldn't see where you would end up if you
slipped. Then there was the avalanche that covered only about
100 metres of trail, but was on a steep slope and consisted of huge
blocks of ice/snow, some as big as cars, jumbled together and very
slippery. I was worried about the blocks moving if I tried to
pick my way across, or slipping down between them. The very
steep hard and slippery earth above the slide was almost impossible
to walk on so I ended up picking my way across the top margin of the
avalanche on the snow blocks and then using all fours and scrub to
lower myself down the steep slope once across. 100 metres had
taken about 30 minutes. There were also some testing snow
bridges across cascades, one where my foot broke through the snow
and dangled about 1.5 metres above a cascade and I had to slide on
my butt across the rest of the snow bridge fearing that at any
minute I would fall through and then get washed down the rocky
falls. Finally, there had been a landslide, probably caused by
an earlier avalanche, that had demolished a steep section of trail
which now required all fours across a steep and very slippery muddy
slope.
I was very glad to finally see Prinz Luitpold Haus
emerge from the fog soon after 5pm, but not so glad to see the final
200m across a steep snow slope to get there. I suspect there
were people in the hut watching me negotiate the slope, much like
golfers in the club house, amusing themselves over a beer watching
other golfers play the 18th hole. I made it and checked into
the alpine hut, which was very popular, for the night. Most of
the people here came up the direct trail from the valley floor and I
didn't see evidence of anybody going my way here today. You
could buy a short hot shower for 2.50 Euros, which I did, before
enjoying a delicious three-course meal. Tomorrow's trail
immediately climbs up to a 2200m pass and you can see it
switch-backing up the mountain behind, crossing steep snow fields
along the way. Not sure how well I'll sleep tonight!
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