The Wonderful German Alps

This last Saturday I awoke to the sun shining through the window.  I immediately hopped out of bed, found Noah already awake in the living room, and insisted that we must go do something! 

After some initial thinking, we decided to check out Höllentalklamm – a gorge down in Grainau.  Now, it was a bit iffy trying to figure out if it would even be open.  There is no set closure date listed online – just that sometime in late October it closes for the winter.  Well, it was November 1^st, and the sun was out, the weather was warm, and we figured – what the heck.  Let’s go check it out.  The worst that would happen is we would have a bit of a hike and have to turn around.

We pack up the car with the dogs and some snacks and some sunscreen, and begin our drive south to the Alps. 

As we make our turn off towards Grainau, I see the brown-colored tourist road sign that says ‘Höllentalklamm’, and underneath it a smaller red sign that says ‘geschlossen’.  Closed.  Well – that was lucky!  We didn’t even have to make it to Grainau to see if the gorge was open or not.  Ok – time for Plan B.  We are in Garmisch, had plans to check out a gorge… what about our old friend Partnachklamm?

We turn the car around and head over to the Olympic Ski Jump center, where the short hike to Partnachklamm begins.  As we are heading down the path towards the entrance, we see that we are far from the only ones that had the idea to spend this gorgeous Saturday doing the exact same thing.  I guess the incredibly packed parking lot was the first clue. Noah and I both have decided that neither of us really wants to take the dogs through this narrow cliff trail with so many other people - except neither of us wants to tell the other one that we have changed our minds.  So instead we both take our time with the dogs, letting people pass us by, and focus on taking some photos of the autumn colors.  

In my mind, I have decided that I wanted to at least check out the bridge that crosses the river – especially since it is before the payment point (after that, you are stuck with the crowds maneuvering through the narrow passage).  We bypass the line of people waiting to pay, and head up the path to the bridge.  Here we pause to take photos and learn that neither of us wants to go in the paid section.  So what to do instead? 

As we are pondering our next move, we realize that on the other end of the bridge is a free path upwards towards the top of the cliff.  And it is essentially clear of all people.  Bingo! 

2 happy dogs and examples of the trail we were on

We make our way gradually higher and higher along the path, only having to leash up the girls a handful of times as people pass us heading down.  Neither of us has a clue where this trail takes us, so after a bit of time hiking I suggest that we might want to turn around to head back.  Thankfully Noah suggests checking out what is behind the curve of the cliff to see what is out there.  Then we can turn around. 

If we had listened to me, we would have missed the bridge that crosses the entire gorge!  We would have turned around right before the main attraction!  Here we find the ‘crowds’ – 7 other hikers that have also gathered on the bridge to look down into the gorge. 

In the top of the photo on the right, you can make out the 'paid' trail cut into the cliff

Now that we felt satisfied that we saw what there was to see, we were ready to backtrack to the parking lot for our next activity of the day – taking the gondola up to the top of Eckbauer Mountain.  I have to give our two dogs a lot of credit here – the gondola fits just two people (one on each side) and is completely open from your waist up.  But those two dogs have learned to trust that we are taking them somewhere awesome, and they nervously sat by our feet in the tiny, swaying gondola. 

It is only our shadows, but you can get an idea of the size of the gondola

The views were lovely, at least for Noah and me

Once we reached the top and freed the dogs, it was like they hadn’t spent the last 10 minutes confined to a small terrifying space.  We walked up to the top of the hill and warmed ourselves in the sun and ate our snacks – us humans sticking to oranges and chips, the dogs excitingly eating as much deer excrement as possible before heeding to our yelling. 

While the views were lovely – the sun was at the wrong angle to get any nice photos of the mountains.  So after our small break, we began following a trail that led away from the restaurant/gondola area and towards where I expected to find good views of the sunny side of the mountains.  I wasn’t disappointed. 

With this lovely lighting, how could we pass up opportunities to photograph our two favorite subjects??? 

First we get the solo shots

Then them together

Then we run them!

With daylight savings over, the sun sets rather early now.  So before we were ready, it was time to leave our alpine oasis and start the journey back home.  We loaded two very happy and exhausted pups into the back seat and followed the other day-trippers back towards the city.  Until next time!