Berchtesgaden small round extended hike - Nov 19

3 minute read

There was a bank holiday 1st of November in Bavaria. Friends from Slovakia came over and we decided to visit Berchtesgaden national park for this 3 days weekend.

Our hike started at Königssee, Jenner ski lift parking lot. Friday was sunny day, at least around Salzburg as it was foggy all the way from Munich. Our proposed plan was to hike up to Carl von Stahl hütte where we would stay for one night. The hut is opened all year, it can be booked online. Based on our pace and weather, we wanted to go to the surrounding peaks the first day. The second day to continue to complete kleine reibn - round hike tour. As we started almost at noon, we anticipated we might not be able to go much further from the hut. Our arrival was after 3pm, we had to sort out the room and we could go for a short walk for a sunset to Pfaffenkegel. We managed to get back for the dinner.

We decided to extend small round hike to go to the opposite end of the Königssee. I could not find boats going there but map shows some trails going around the hike. This was one of our surprises that day, more described below.

Our second day started after 8 am. There were not much people going up to Schneibstein in the morning. The peak had 5 centimeters snow cover, it snowed 2 days ago. As we were going higher, the temperature was dropping. As result we were putting back on our layers. The temperature at the top was just 2C. Therefore we did not stay long at the summit and continued towards Seeleinsee. We saw only 2 more hikers in front of us and later 2 hikers behind us, otherwise just us on this trail. As we were walking, we noticed dozen of Chamois.

One moment, we thought we were looking at another Chamois. This time it was a dog. Suzi from the hut. She joined us. We did not know what to do as we were far away from the hut and had to continue our trail to make it for the last boat. She was leading and showing us her home. We increased our pace from Seilensee, as we knew there is still quite a trail ahead.

The last descent was challenging sometimes as trail was covered by leaves and lot of streams crossed the trail. We lost hundreds of meters within a hour or so. We were finally standing at Obersee, still 15 minutes more to Königssee. We realized our proposed path might not be ideal as there was almost a wall in front of us. What do we do? We explored other options but none were ideal but we had to move as soon as possible, only more than a hour left before the sunset. Note, the hiking trail we did at the end is not recommended. We lost the trail for some time. Unfortunately, this is where we had to traverse steeper sections above the lake. The leaves made it more difficult as they were all over and we did not know what is underneath. We were progressing slowly here . After this challenging part, the rest was fine - narrow trail most of the time. Our relief started as soon as we reached Kessel. We made it in time for one of the last boats to get us back. If we did not manage this one, we would have to walk in the dark via unknown trail. There was also stream where we could drink water. We were quite happy to be on the boat right before the sunset. We returned Suzi to her owners.