There is a trail crossing the alps that is apparently only known to Germans, but for us this seems to be as popular as for others the Camino. It is called dreampath (Traumpfad) Munich – Venice and it passes by all of the beautiful mountain ranges the alps have to offer, but especially the dolomites. When I arrived there my mind was blown away by the beauty nature has to offer. I had no idea that this landscape existed almost right in front of my doorstep. Getting there was a tough journey though.
Out of various reasons I started the hike in Sonthofen and not in Munich, giving me two additional Mountain ranges to cross (yeah). On my first day, I walked 27km ending at the Bad Kissinger hut at Tannheimer valley, at 1700 meters above sea level. This gave me a nice 600 meter sprint on altitude on the last 4 kilometres of day one, but when I finally arrived it was the nicest feeling I experienced in a while. The hut was beautiful and clean, I got upgraded to get my own room and there was even a vegan dinner available – exactly how the trip should have started. Unfortunately not how it was about to go.
The second day started nicely with my first peak and I was confident I would manage the rest of the trip as well… Then I needed to descend, hurt my knees and ankle, could not find a place to stay in holiday spoiled Bavaria, it started to rain when I was already exhausted, it took me forever to get that rain poncho over my head and backpack making me look like an idiot while trying (seriously try to throw a poncho over you with a big backpack on your shoulders and you know what I am talking about). When I finally arrived at the hotel all I wanted to do was fall asleep. The next day was a long one again. 28 kilometres, 1200 meters up and another 600 down through the Ammergauer alps, actually passing by Schloss Neuschwanstein (what I discovered by accident). The landscape was amazing, but I could not enjoy any of it. My feet hurt, my knees fell apart, my legs burned, my head was as red as a tomato. I went through all stages of emotions, starting with complimenting me on how well I was doing, just putting one feet in front of the other, to full out rage (“wtf I hate it here – wtf was I thinking, these stupid f***ing mountains will never end”) to desperation (“I will f***ing die here. Seve, I’m coming!”) to actually and most embarrassingly just being whiny and almost calling for my mom. I think only the people who once experienced the mystery of a mountain peak being just like a mirage, never coming closer no matter how long you walk towards it can truly relate here. I did manage to arrive on time at the hut though and I still have no idea how I got there. The waitress just gave me a pitiful look and asked me if I would like to drink anything before going through the formalities of the stay. The third day was by far the most exhausting one of the entire tour and left a crack in my self-esteem that needed some time to heal. The ability of the body to recover was amazing though – I arrived completely burned out at the huts in the evening, walking like a duck, looking like a survivor of a group lost in the desert for weeks, but got up semi-fresh and ready to keep moving the next day.
I had another two days before arriving in Hintertux, a small German village consisting of one house and the hostel I would stay at. Unfortunately I messed up my schedule and instead of two days of rest I needed to stay three before the hut of my third mountain range opened, giving me just one day too many to think about what a stupid idea that had been. It did not help at all that on the day of finally hiking up the Karwendel mountain range it poured rain as if there was no tomorrow. Plus, because of starting the trip that early in June, most of the huts in Austria were not open yet, the tracks were not passable, or the huts were already fully booked and I did not even have Internet or phone reception to plan anything further. What did help though was Sandra – I did not want to meet anyone at this trip, always imagined me going solo through this journey. To be quite honest, I was not even planning that much on surviving it. If I just slipped and fell on the way, I would not have minded much at that stage.
So when she arrived my first reflex was to leave the room and go outside to chill at the river. She was on the same trail as me facing the same problems I had, and when she saw me looking outside the window into the pouring rain, ready to call it a trip and going back home, she just decided to let me piggy back on her journey to Italy. She booked all of the hotels and huts on the way and researched the trails we could use. So for the next seven days I accidentally found myself in company and even more surprisingly, I enjoyed it. I had never imagined to meet someone on this trip who is that different in so many ways, yet connecting on such a deep level. For the first time in a while, life was just “easy”. All I had to do in the morning was to get up and follow her footsteps. This was actually a little challenging sometimes, given that she was a mountain goat just easily jumping up and down the various slippery paths on the way and me just experiencing the lowest I have ever been, with a backpack that felt as heavy as a truck, no fitness and as clumsy as a city person in a mountain can be. Her favourite story is still how I got almost stuck while trying to boulder over a snow-covered track, sticking on the mountain with both hands and feet being glued on it (NOT shaking, girl).
She somehow stuck around though and thanks to her I made it passed Innsbruck and towards Alto Adige with the first smiles on my face for a while, some flat land city girl shaming (well deserved) and pretty nice and also well deserved spa hotels (with a six course dinner menu. SIX courses, I did not even know that existed).
One of my favourite memories of the entire trip is arriving in Alto Adige. We always said that, once in Italy, the rest will be a piece of cake. And it somehow was. By the time my fitness was getting better and thanks to a few parcels that made their way back to Germany my backpack was getting to a weight I could carry, plus Sandra convinced me to buy walking sticks and it was probably the best purchase I made for this trip. It was almost scripted that the day before it was, again, raining cats and dogs in Austria. The trail was not well maintained nor signposted, and first my foot ended almost knee deep in mud and then my head got shocked by an electrical kettle fence. The next day when we arrived in Italy, the sun was shining, everyone was in a good mood, the trail was easy to follow, it was warm and comfy. I could not help but run the last meters towards Italy and starting to jump in excitement when I saw the sign. For a few moments we just sat in silence, soaking in the view before enjoying our first drinks in Italy. The first milestone was achieved.
In the next days we passed fields filled with marmots, saw our first glaciers on the trip and bathed in literally ice-cold mountain lakes (just for the picture from my side, but worth it!). Just before the Dolomites our ways parted for a while and so I continued on my own, much more confident and a bit lighter than when we first met.
If I was not happy to have stuck to the plan before, I did when I arrived in the Dolomites. OMFG they are beautiful! I stepped back a little on the daily kilometres, allowing me to climb a few peaks on the way and actually giving me some time to breath in between and enjoy more of my surroundings than being scared I would not arrive on time at the hut for the night. Most of the time it was sunny in the morning to early afternoon, giving me plenty of time to just relax and cherish the view, writing in my diary and sorting some stuff out. I finally got far more comfy to jump around the narrow and uneven mountain trails. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit iffy and it often started to rain and thunderstorm in the early afternoon but given my reduced kilometres per day I did not have a problem to arrive on time in the shelter. Except for that one day where it started to pour rain in the middle of an easy via ferrata, right next to a peak that I wanted to climb so instead of doing the thoughtful thing and joining the others on their way down to the next hut I decided to stay on the top, waiting for the rain to end. It did not (of course), and instead of having a sunny walk down I was unnecessarily soaked in water and frozen to bones when I arrived for the night. It didn’t help that I decided to cut a bit on food as the trip was getting a lot more expensive than first anticipated (huts are not the simple shelters anymore meant to provide a safe space for hikers. More like expensive hostels in youth hostel style requiring prior reservation for people who make plans a year ahead). My body punished me the next day for it when I wanted to take on a more challenging via ferrata so I opted for french fries and non-alcoholic beer for a total of 15 Euros before hitting the trail. Almost no shaking on the via ferrata and got all the way up to the top!
The next day was a big one, it led me to the highest point on this entire trip, Piz Boe, 3000 metres above 0, where I would also spend the night. And also where Sandra was supposed to join me again, so I started the day quite excited, not forgetting to climb up to the top of Pisciadú on the way. I had plenty of time so I stopped at the bottom of Piz Boe for some lunch before finishing off the day on the top. Sandra on the other hand did not only need to skip a hut and make a one day hike out of what is supposed to be cut in two, but also needed to hurry because thunderstorms were supposed to start in the early afternoon. So she actually managed a 16 km hike with more than 2000 metres in altitude change in less than six hours. She arrived completely exhausted with her first words being “I didn’t have anything since breakfast” and my naively mindless happy-to-see-her brain responding with “oh, I just had a nice break and some pasta for lunch”. I still do not know how she managed to not push me down the hill. She was probably too exhausted. Nevertheless, we spend the best sunrise with a view of the Marmolata the next morning and an “easy” hike with lots of breaks in between around the mountains of Piz Boe before descending to the valley.
We saw the Marmolata in the distance for the entire next two days and she was just so incredibly beautiful. Three days later another big part of her glacier ice would collapse, burying too many people underneath it. We did not know that at the time though and arrived happily in Alleghe, a small and beautiful mountain village that is just meant for postcards and Rosamunde Pilcher movies. At first I did not want to drink any alcohol before arriving in Venice, but we actually had something to celebrate and we found the best Italian pizza ever (at least it felt like it) and a couple or more glasses of white wine were natural to go with it. An hour later I was the happiest tipsy hiker ever, holding my stomach laughing out loud and crying tears of laughter instead of sorrow for the first time in a long while. Still one of my favourite evenings during the entire trip.
After Alleghe you can either take a Gondola or increase your days by adding another hut in between you and Venice as the suggested route leads you through a little detour, but we opted for the third option and followed the original path by Ludwig Graßler through the woods. After the beauty overload of the past week and half just seeing trees around me was actually a very nice alternative. We arrived at our next destination right on time, but I must say that at the time I was getting a bit tired of mountain huts. I started to realise that I would not miss it too much once I would have arrived in Venice. Huts are always up for surprises though and so we met an Australian girl now living in London with the best Aussie-British fusion humour possible. So for a good part of the next day’s hike she entertained us with her stories she experienced in the various huts and I almost fell over my feet laughing more than once. The weather was still iffy, but the beauty of the landscape was still (or even because of it) mesmerising beautiful. We arrived in Belluno a couple of days later and for most people that marks the end of the trip through the alps.
We are not most people though and decided to take up one last challenge hiking up Col Visentin, 1500 meters above sea level. Sounds like a piece of cake after having jollied around 2000+ meters above sea level for the last four weeks, but man – how we got proven wrong! We were suddenly thrown back to Zillertal with tracks that were not even remotely signposted and grass that led up to the hips on our final meters to the hut, nicely sprinkled with stinging-nettles that stung our legs and arms. Our joy of arriving at the hut for the night was quickly pulled down when we saw our sleeping camp for the night. If I was not done with mountain huts before, I was afterwards. The sleeping room and washrooms were so shocking it was almost funny. Something amazing sparked my eye outside though, as we were finally at the very other end of the alps: Flat land! And the sea at the horizon. It was such a humbling feeling, standing on top of the very last mountain before finally descending for good again.
Being on flat land did not make it that much easier though. Five days of walking around 30 km every day, in the beating sun and not much shade were awaiting us. But there was still room for pleasant surprises as we discovered by accident that we walked through the Prosecco region – of course calling for a fine glass of it at 10 AM when we passed through one of the beautiful small villages.
We started our days in between four and five in the morning to prevent being exposed to the sun as much as possible. We usually arrived around one pm at our place for the night and were just destroyed until continuing the next day. It worked until the last day. I did not want to get up. Sandra pushed me out of bed and onto the road eventually but did pay for it with a grumpy self of me I did not experience in a while. Being beaten by millions of mosquitos along the way did not help either. But in the end we made it and with the first glimpse of the actual sea my mind was all over the moon. It felt so good to jump back into that salty water 🙂 We were so close to arrive in Venice at Piazza San Marco and drinking the best ever Aperol Spritz! Cheers to us, we made it 🙂
