Spring greetings from Walchensee

I kicked off this year's hiking season at Walchensee, a pristine lake in the Voralpenland region south of Munich.

Together with my friends Titouan and Sam we boarded the early RB60, one of the regional trains transporting locals and tourists to the picturesque villages on the roots of the Alps. As always with these RBs, the train was packed, but we somehow managed to find seats. I'm super grateful for these "free" (with Deutschlandticket) trains, but it is kind of stressful to spend an hour packed into the train with so many people, especially since its the same situation on the way back. If owning a car wasn't so expensive, I would go for it just for the convenience of being able to drive to the mountains.

After a short bus ride from the Kochel train station we arrived at the foot of the Herzogstand mountain. The ground was still lightly covered in snow, melting in real time in the warm Sun. Not minding the muddy trail, we started our hike up the path, with many other small groups in front and behind us. It was clearly a popular hiking day, one of the first good ones of the year.

The path got a lot trickier closer to the treeline, and even had some short via ferrata sections. With the melting snow it was not easy going. Some people were clearly struggling with the slippery snow, perhaps combined with a fear of heights, as there was no proper railing between the path and the cliff. This caused some minor traffic jams, as there was no easy way to overtake. All in all the hike to the top was roughly 6 km. The view down to the calm, mirrorlike lake was definitely worth the difficult ascent.

After treating ourselves with some käsespätzle and radler for lunch, we took the easy way down on the other side of the mountain, totaling roughly 13 km of walking for the day.

PS. I've neglected updating my blog over the winter, but hopefully I can pick up the cadence over the summer!