We set off on a bus this morning for the cable car up the mountain of Taubenstein just near the town of Spritzingsee. It was a beautiful day, clear blue sky so we all felt very lucky.
The hike was really neat, mostly up with some pretty rough spots but with our hiking poles we both felt pretty comfortable. There were 6 of us plus leader Alan on this hike; the others did the "harder" hike. Same length but more scrambling. Our knees were pretty good today. I had mine taped up and that seem to give it enough support so was happy. Hike only 6.9km but 390m of ascent.
Up to the rock outcropping on the right in the distance.
It's very windy at our highest point. We head over and down the path you can see in pic below to the lodge Rotwandhaus. If you look hard you can see it in the middle of the picture. You can book a room there as well as eat. Ordering lunch was interesting as the black board menu was only in German and the staff did not have any English. Luckily a young guy in the lineup was able to help us a bit.
The cows seem to be free range up here. Also saw a bunch of goats.
Wendy and I shared a plate of some kind of pasta with a ton of Parmesan cheese on it and dried fried onions. Surprisingly delicious. Served with a drink that's called apfelsaft which is an apple juice but tastes a bit more like apple cider. No alcohol. Very nice. One of our group just ordered off the menu with no idea what he was getting and got a plate mounded high with bits of pancakes, refried or maybe deep-fried then covered with powdered sugar. One piece tasty but more than that - too heavy. He did not get through 1/2 the plateful.
Just as we were finishing up lunch, our beautiful warm sun disappeared, clouds rolled up the side of the mountain, the wind picked up and Alan told us we had to get a move on and head back down the mountain. By the time we left we could not see more than a few feet ahead of us. The cow I had taken a picture of coming up was just a bell sounding somewhere in the fog. It started to rain and every time we came into an open spot the wind was strong. The rain made the rocks on the trail slick so we had to be very careful as we made our way back down same trail we had come up. So glad to have our poles. It was a bit scary but we all got down with nothing worse than mud on our hiking pants. The plan had been to have hot chocolate at the restaurant at the top of the cable car but when we arrived at 2pm they told us we had to go down immediately because they were going to close it down due to high wind. Yikes! That would not have been fun. Relief when we got down. We walked around the lake in the pouring rain to the town of Spritzingsee and went into a Gasthof for hot chocolate that was the best yet! Our bus picked us up along with the other group who had come down a different route and did not get into the winds and cloud as we did.
By the time the bus got us all back to our hotel all I could think about was going down to the pool and the hot tub. Great way to end a good day.
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