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 1st, 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| It is only our shadows, but you can get an idea of the size of the gondola |
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| 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???
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| First we get the solo shots |
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| Then them together |
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| 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!
