Hochstaufen DAAD Tour

I planned to have a hike in the Bad Reichenhall area going through a deeper mountain, but destiny decided otherwise. Between waking up at a reasonable time of 04:30 and running to the train barely in time before departure, I forgot to pack most of the things I prepared in advance. I took less water, forego making tea, didn't pack the cake I baked for the trip and left the cookies I bought on the shelf. Still, I made it to the train in time, which was most important. I usually take the earlier S-Bahn to München Hbf, this time wasn't an exception.

When I boarded and caught my breath, I realized that we were still on the station. 10 minutes later an announcement was made: another section of the train is stuck at an earlier stop due to an issue with the railway and there's no timeline for the fix. 70 minutes later it was clear I'll have to modify or cancel the hike, leaving Abeer and Mikuláš stranded on the main station. After some negotiation we decided to take a later train to Salzburg and go for a different hike. We decided on the Hochstaufen (1771 m) peak, with a route going from Piding to Bad Reichenhall.

After arriving at the station a few hours later, we headed to Schloß Staufeneck, then turned around and went parallel to the mountain to go up the ridge along the Fuderheustein (1321 m) peak. We climbed Fuderheustein (1321 m) from the wrong side, so we didn't get to touch the cross at the top, but the height was the same, so we proceeded further.

Quite quickly we noticed that there were a lot of slippery sections of the route, some with snow, others with mud. We exercised caution, but still slipped up quite a few times. Nonetheless, we went past Steinerne Jäger, which was the point of no return to hike up the mountain, and started the climb on the rocky section, continuing all the way to the chapel at the top. The route was quite rough and confusing, so we slowed down by a lot compared to our previous pace. It was tedious, but the views more than covered for it. The route we chose goes along the southern side of the mountain, so all the time we could see the tall Austrian mountains all around us.

At the top of Hochstaufen (1771 m) we met a local military guy stretching his muscles on a quick hike up the mountain through the route we wanted to take on the way down. He was very eager to talk about his shooting ranges, trenches and other activities at the station. We were also assaulted by some alpine choughs, which took our bread and nuts. We got some info from the military guy and exchanged snacks, had a lunch break ourselves and started the descent, as the sun already began to set. Near Mittelstaufen (1657 m) we turned onto the way down the mountain side. On the way down we sped up a bit, but at some point on a slippery section Abeer tripped and stretched his leg. This prompted us to slow down and pick sections with better terrain over faster sections. We also miscalculated the amount of water we needed, so we were quite thirsty by the time we got down.

Thankfully, we came across a mineral water tap and refilled our bottles to the brim. It was around 9 PM on a Sunday, but we met a local from a village a few kilometres away, who drove all the way to the tap to get a few bottles of water. The mineral water tap is marked as "Bad Reichenhaller Mineralwasser" on the map. We continued along the edge of the Hochstaufenkaserne, seeing a lot of soldiers returning back to base before curfew, and finally arrived at the Bad Reichenhall Kirchberg station.

We still had around 40 minutes until the train, so we left Abeer to relax and proceeded through the town to the main Bad Reichenhall station in hopes of finding something to eat or drink. Unfortunately, all the cafés were closed. Miraculously, we managed to find a cafe that was still open (Il Centro), with local thugs counting income from the cash register. We walked past them and ordered hot chocolate to go. The town itself was quite lovely, and I'd definitely like to return there one day. But at that point we didn't have time to explore too much, so we headed to the station and boarded the train, meeting Abeer inside.

In general, I would definitely recommend this hike, but the rocky and slippery sections should definitely be taken into account, since they mess up the distance and duration estimates by a lot. For a redo of this route, I would probably skip the first peak and instead spend more time in Bad Reichenhall.