Wank

My third trip to the Alps was to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, two towns that were combined into one by Hitler before the 1936 winter Olympics were held there. The towns are at about 720 m altitude, and nearby rise the sharp peaks of Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, on the border with Austria, and Alpspitze, a picturesque peak with a huge slab of an east face, sloping down at about 45 degrees.

I went with a former student of Hochschule München and some of his friends to 'climb' Wank, a smaller hill with no snow - currently the path up Zugspitze is closed because of snow. Here is a photo looking out over Garmisch from a few hundred meters up the trail. The Matterhorn-like peak in the background is Daniel, and is in Austria.

And here, looking slightly to the left of the previous photo, is the massif that contains Zugspitze (on the right) and Alpspitze (on the left).

And here they are together.

Wank is about 1800 m high, so the trail gained about 3500 feet in a very short distance. It was extremely steep. But I was with youngsters only half my age, so I had to keep up! After about 3 hours we made it to the top. Of course, since this is Bavaria, at the false summit just west of the peak, there was a large crucifix. And also, of course, since this is Bavaria, at the summit there was a restaurant and beer garden. Unfortunately, these were closed because of the season. They are open both in summer and winter, when the visitor population increases, but on a November weekend that wasn't supposed to be warm, but turned out to be about 55 degrees, they didn't think there would be enough hikers to support their sales.

Here is another view from the top, of a small town named Farchant.

Finally, after we hiked down, one of the young hikers had actually grown up in Garmisch, and took us to visit his grandmother. We were able to look around her house - which was 350 years old - and also have some homemade cookies - which were delicious. Then we went with his father, sister, and brother-in-law to have dinner at a local restaurant. On the advice of his father, who has been a chef for 35 years (a few in Washington, DC, and a few at the famous Hofbräuhaus) I ordered Wildgulash, which was a goulash with deer meat, a local specialty. Very good. Here's the restaurant.