At the top, the view is quite beautiful. The difficulty, however, is making it there. To be able to capture such a breath-taking view, you have to make it to the top of the mountain. Here is the route:
19km, 1,120 metres of vertical climbing, "unpaved, gravel" -- ha! Well, it probably would have consisted of unpaved and gravel routes if we'd stayed on the marked path as we intended to do. However, somehow in our ("our" = one George Pemulis and his university chum) infinite wisdom we missed a turn or something and ended up crawling up 50+ degree inclines hanging on to roots and fallen trees for dear life and manically searching for the lost path for an entire morning. We pushed ourselves through the thick brush of the Alpine woods in steadily-climbing 30-degree heat, dreaming of cold water, feeling our way, ascending onwards by creating an imagined and dangerous route through the virgin-forest untouched by human hands until our own. The temperature continued to rise and the sun-beat down hard on us whenever the tree-canopy briefly opened itself to the sky. Just when it seemed like all hope was truly lost, several hours after setting out in the Bavarian morning, neon colours appeared in the periphery of our vision, far in the distance.
The neon came closer and at first I imagined that this may have represented the end of it all. The world ends not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a flurry of neon colours approaching from the distance, bearing down, like lycra-clad trail runners come to deliver me from every evil work and preserve me unto the heavenly kingdom of... oh, no wait, I guess they're actually trail runners and therefore, over there is the path. Woohoo! We found the path.
Following any near-death experience it's important to both celebrate and bring your nervous system-induced elevated heart rate back to within an acceptable level on the safe-living-heart-rate-o-matic. We made it to the top, had a short break at the beer hut, and made our way safely to the lake.
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