Zugspitze July 2018

Johannes and I drove to Munich on Saturday collecting Brendan and some boots for Johannes there before driving on to Garmisch-Partenkirchen where we camped the night.

On Sunday we got up at 5 am and by 6:30 am we began walking up towards Zugspitze. We followed the route through the Höllentalschlucht and up to the Höllentalangerhütte. We then continued on to a small section of klettersteig. From there it was a wander up to the Höllentalferner. We put on crampons where the stones turned to snow and walked up the perhaps 100 vertical metres to the start of the second klettersteig section. From there it was fairly slow going due to the high traffic. Brendan and I snuck past and romped up to the summit. We sat there and waited for Johannes and watched the streams of tourists coming from the gondola and walking the few metres to the summit to claim that they have been on top of Germany’s highest mountain. The summit really wasn’t nice. The whole area was like a huge shopping complex. There were restaurants and whatnot.

Still we made use of the infrastructure and took the gondola back down. We looked at the nearby lake before taking a train back to the car and driving back to Lindau.

The ascent took us around 6 hours with stops (there weren’t many).

Above: A map of our route (Kompass Wanderkarte)

Above: We drove to Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Saturday and camped the evening there. We ate out in the evening and I ordered Kaiserschmarrn for dessert to ensure that I would be fully charged in the morning. We set off from the carpark about 6:30am eager to avoid the crowds.

Above: After an hour or so we reached the Höllentalschlucht. This is a ravine maybe 800m long with plenty of water from above and tunnels through the rock.

Above left: We passed the Höllentalangerhütte around breakfast time and continued on despite Johannes calling for second breakfast. We stopped at the first klettersteig for this. Above right: We passed the Höllentalangerhütte around breakfast time and continued on despite Johannes calling for second breakfast. We stopped at the first klettersteig for this.

Above left: We reached and crossed the Höllentalferner using crampons (not strictly required for the snow conditions but nice to have). We didn’t rope up (I left the glacier rope in the car) and only saw one party doing this. There were some visible crevasses though so depending on the time of year it might pay to put a rope on. The climb across the glacier was just 200 m or so. We took off our crampons and put our harnesses back on for the last ferrata section. Above right: There were plenty of other people doing the route as well. Although we had left early many were doing it in two days so had left from the Höllentalangerhütte in the morning.

Above left: The second klettersteig was not hard either and there was a nice view back down to the glacier below. Above right: The cloud came in a bit at times but the weather was generally ok.

Above: Strava’s 2 cents.

More photos…