Groundhog Day – Hiking in the Mangfell Mountains, Bavaria, Germany

Rotwand (Red Wall)

9.2km – with Prasana.
↑ 887m
↓ 825m

Today’s original plan was to climb Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. But after the bad weather in the last few days I called a few places like cable car stations, skiing school and hotels nearby to ask if it’s safe to climb Zugspitze with the amount of new snow they have up there. It’s not. (Ironically, the German Alpine Club, which should know best, doesn’t have a helpline anymore. We could have dropped them an email, but who knows when that would have been answered.) So no Zugspitze for us this time. We had to change our plans.

Mangfell Mountains, Alps, Germany

After a bit of research we decided for a tour in the Mangfell Mountains. It was superb weather today: sunshine, a few clouds, not too hot. Ideal for hiking. We took the cable car (Taubensteinbahn) to its upper station and walked towards Rotwand (Red Wall – 1885m). From there we descended down to Großtiefentalalm where we had our picnic. Unfortunately – or fortunately – we skipped about 2km of our walk by taking a wrong turn. The time estimations in our book are very tight as breaks, enjoying the countryside and taking pictures are not taken into account. And this time we were a little bit under time pressure as the last cable car’s ride down was 8 hours later. Eventually, we could finish our walk casually with a beer and a Spezi before taking the cable car down from the mountain again.

Groundhog in the Mangfell Mountains, Alps, Germany

Somehow, I’m a sleeping pill today. We started early and I couldn’t really wake up after leaving the house. But my emotional highlight today was a groundhog. I was sleepwalking along the path when Prasana shouted over to me: “What is that?”, pointing at something fury and plushy. And there it was: a little groundhog hopping over the grass just a few meters from us. And with an energetic squeak-attack I got super excited. This was my first groundhog seeing in the wild. And they are so cute! And massive. I imagined them to be much smaller. But apparently they grow 40-50 cm (head + body) + 10-20 cm tail. I’d have loved to take one home. Sitting with me on the couch, watch Britain’s Got Talent and munch some salad leaves… Maybe next time. 🙂




More Hiking Madness on Facebook and Twitter.