A Hike to Remember

Mittenwald – It was 7 AM when the alarm when off. I looked outside and the sky was clear and I could see the Alps! By 8 we were downstairs being served breakfast. The breakfast was similar to our last BnB. Cured meats, breads, jams and the like. Today was our hiking day. We started where we left off last night. Past the waterfall. We headed in the direction of Lautersee. Our BnB owner had said this was a lake and judging by the sign we concluded that the SEE in Lautersee meant lake. There was a restaurant at Lautersee but it wasn’t quite lunch time yet so we decided to hike on to Ferchensee. Frechensee was 40 min from our current location so it was a nice easy hike. Food was also represented on the sign so we pressed on.

Little snack

We had a little snack on our fig bar that made us forget about lunch. Instead of going to eat we looked further on the map. We saw that Elmau had food and was an hour away. This should give us enough time to work up our hunger. The scenery was amazing.

The G7 conference

When we got to Elmau we knew something was strange. We saw a lot of fencing that looked out of place and tons of trailers and police cars. Unknown to us this was the location of the G7 summit.

We knew it was over but we were unable to go to Elmau to get food or use the facilities. This presented us with three choices.

Find an alternate route back to Mittenwald.
Travel an hour hiking on a road to the town of Klais and take a train to Mittenwald.
Retrace our steps and head back the way we came.

Alternate route

I was voting for Klais and the train but Devin convinced me to take an alternate route. The new route started off through the security perimeter that had been created for the summit. We have a theory that some of the trail signs may have been taken down for the security perimeter that was around the summit. We lost our way and ended up on a road that took us way north of where we wanted to be.

At this point we were running pretty low on water but came up with a plan to take a trail back to Mittenwald. (Still 2+ hours away. Half of the trail ended up being uphill. We were extremely winded, tired, and thirsty when we got to the top. We were rewarded with some amazing views. It definitely made the extra hiking worth it.

Chairlift from heaven

At 45 minutes till Mittenwald we came across a chairlift that was operating. I approached and asked if we could pay for a way down. At this point we had already hiked 12 miles so I was looking for any easy way to get off of my feet. The guy charged us 5 euros each and we got to ride down in style. This transaction happened really fast and I didn’t realize that Devin had never ridden a chair lift until I was already seated and gone. I would have given her a quick briefing but she handled it easily.