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Journal: |
I went down to breakfast at 7am and sat with the German guy I
dined with last night after we had seen each other several times on
the trail yesterday. He speaks less English than I speak
German, so our conversations have been pretty basic, but I know that
yesterday was his last day hiking of four, and that he has arranged
for somebody to pick him up at the Gasthof at 8am this morning and
drive him to the nearest town where he will catch a bus back to
where he left his car, then drive back to Stuttgart where he works
in a hospital. It's a 6-7 hour drive and he was complaining
about it.
I was ready to start hiking at 8am, by which time
it was raining steadily. The German guy said the forecast was
for rain this morning, clearing in the afternoon. I dressed
myself for wet weather in the vain hope that with my Goretex pants
and gaiters I might be able to keep my feet relatively dry though my
boots were still damp. It worked well for the first hour or so
as I climbed gently through eerie fog-bound pine forests to near
Plocken Pass, but then I had to cross a saturated cow pasture and
some flooding creeks. The rain continued, oscillating between
heavy and light, but always raining. After Plocken I had a
steady 1000m climb through alternating pasture and forest up to the
highest point of the day, Koderkopf (2176m). The pastures
featured overgrown track and quite long grass and my boots, socks
and feet were soon saturated, as was the rest of me. There
were occasional views of the surrounding forests and mountains, but
generally fog and cloud obscured everything. Adding in the
thunderstorms that came through about every hour, it made for pretty
miserable hiking, especially higher up where there was a cold wind
and the rain included some hail. I started to worry about
hypothermia and would have stopped to add a layer and a hat, but
there was nowhere to do it without getting stuff wet. Part of
the problem, was that I was hiking quite slowly because of the poor
footing, taking care not to fall, so I wasn't generating much heat
as I walked.
Eventually I crossed Koderkopf, fortunately
between thunderstorms, and began my descent. The path was
often a running stream, as much as 6" deep in places, and I just
sploshed through by this time. I had thought I would just hike
non-stop to Zollnersee Hutte, supposedly a 6.5 hour trip but, by
around 1pm I began to worry that I was losing the plot a bit, and
decided I needed some food. So I found a flat rock and huddled
under my groundsheet as protection from the rain/hail while I ate my
muesli bars and chocolate. That did seem to revive me a bit
and I felt even better at 2pm when the rain stopped though the fog
and cloud persisted. For the next few kilometres the route
descended gradually along a balcony trail which wasn't too overgrown
or wet, making for a pleasant change and I stretched out a bit.
The last few kilometres of the day were also nice, following a
farm road up through a high alpine valley and then, after a short
steep ascent, across a high alpine plain to Zollnersee Hutte, which
I reached at 3:45pm. It was quite small, but there were only
six people there, so my fear of not being able to find a place on a
Friday night proved groundless. My average speed for the day
was only 2kph, which reflected the weather and difficulty of the
trail. Hopefully, everything dries out a bit tomorrow.
For dinner, I took a chance and ordered something from the menu that
I thought was some kind of pasta. Alas, it was a cold meat and
cheese platter with bread, not what I wanted at all. However,
there was nothing for it but to eat it and try not to look at the
nice hot meals my fellow hikers were eating. They were a
friendly bunch in the hut with a female German couple, a young
Hungarian couple hiking with an Austrian woman and a Dutch/German
couple. Some of them hadn't ventured out for the day from the
Hutte because of the weather. The common language was English,
so that made it easier for me to participate in the conversation.
I was telling them about having seen a small tent 100m off the trail
as I approached Koderkopf in terrible weather and my supposition
that there were hikers in there sheltering from the weather.
To much hilarity the Dutch/German couple owned up to having been in
the tent waiting for the rain to stop before hiking on to the Hutte.
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