In celebration of the relaunch of GipfelReisen.de I will post seven of my most favorite hiking videos for the coming week.
This is another tour of many faces. Like all the other trips before, I found a mountain name on map I had to laugh at. This time, it was „Bierfasslkopf“ (a trivilized form of „head of a beer barrel“). Turns out, the decision to go there (which took me about 2 years to fullfil) was an awesome idea with the longest staircase I’ve ever taken, trails on steep mountain faces you can not believe they’re still usable, an otherwise forbidden fire celebration and mysterious ice cave.
The trail upwards is very steep, really exhausting and a little bit dangerous. It’s amazing that the whole way up is really more like one endless staircase. The trip gets more exiting, when the staircase decides to lean itself towards a steep face (3:15). Sliping can be deadly. Finally we reach a nice lodge on the windy side of the „Untersberg“ mountain top (5:50).
We were at the lodge at the day of solstice, the only day where some people are allowed to make fire inside the Alps. As it dawned beautifully (6:45), we had one of the most impressive alpine evenings I can remember. It was freezingly cold at the night, so the fire was the only way for us to get at least some warmth.
The next day was beautiful, yet cloudy and so we walked in and above clouds towards am impressive wind gap (10:30) between to peaks with amazing views. Then, the trail did a turn you couldn’t believe it was able to do it… it lead towards a scarp that was so steep, it had to use tunnels in order to progress (11:30). One of our mates slipped at during some more dangerous parts at Minute 12:25 and nearly gave me a flatline. Eagles where watching us, too (12:40).
Then, out of nowhere, there is an entrance to a cave (13:20). The best case of global warming I got so far. Actually, the cave is full of ice even in summer. But this winter, the cave was not able to gain enough ice so most of it was gone already. Unfortunately, I ran out of battery at the end, so I only have several seconds left of the last ice part in the inner partof this impressive cave (14:00), rest being shots done with my mobile. The trail quickly lead us down to the other side of Untersberg where we took the bus back home.
Ah, yes: Bierfasslkopf is actually over the abyss at minute 4:43. Strange, what simple laughs at names can turn into at the end. 😉