Rampoldplatte as a First

After the previous exhausting hikes I've done this route came as a breath of fresh air. I could wake up a bit later, come to München Hbf at a reasonable time without a hurry, board a half-empty train and go on my way with David, a friend I met at my Tischtennis practice. I haven't scouted out the route in advance at all, haven't looked at the map, and haven't checked the webcams around. Thus, the first thing I did was transferring the route from Mapy.cz to OsmAnd for subjectively more comfortable offline viewing.

The hike starts off very slowly, going along the river Kirchbach. Most of the road is asphalt or gravel, except the last dirt segment (which we took as a shortcut). Eventually, we arrived at Schuhbräualm (1157 m) for our first stop of the day to take some pictures while the valley was not yet covered in fog.

From there we went up to Rampoldplatte (1422 m), making a new trail in the shallow snow, since we couldn't find a substantial trail from previous hikers during some segments. We enjoyed the scenic panorama from the peak together with a family having a rest there with their dog. Wendelstein (1838 m) looked huge in comparison! After taking our fair share of pictures, we checked out the small casket tied to the cross to find a "guest book" of sorts with best wishes from fellow visitors. We wrote ourselves in and headed back down a slightly different track.

At Rampoldalm (1249m) we turned right instead of going down, going to Lechneralm (1246 m) over a small hill. Afterwards, followed the paved road down a bit until crossing a Kirchbach water stream and heading to Breitenberghütte (1050 m). At the hut we had some cake and I bought Jägertee, discovering that the cup of tea has 12-15‰ ABV. The cashier at the hut was very friendly and outgoing, but we didn't have much time to spare to talk to him. Exiting back onto Wanderweg 9 we followed the track to Sankt Margarethen, continuing to Brannenburg to get back home.

My takeaway from this hike after going to Soiernspitze (2253 m) and Pyramidenspitze (1997 m) earlier this year was that 17 km hikes with 1100 m of elevation difference now feel like walks in the park. On one hand, I'm proud of my progress and wish to keep it up. David called his experience "Reconnecting with nature" and I can't agree more (except I do it on a regular basis). On the other hand, I understand there's a limit to my physical abilities, time, and potential hiking locations. Eventually, I will either run out of "content" or injure myself and stop hiking altogether. It's a sad thought, but I can't help myself not think about it.