Last weekend, my wife and I set out on a hike in the scenic Karwendel mountains. Our plan was to navigate a small trail that would lead us to an alpine meadow with a couple of huts. From there, we would return via a forest road to our parked car.
Starting the Adventure
After driving to the starting point, we parked the car and checked the map one last time before embarking on the first leg of our hike along a forest road. The weather that day was rather grey, with clouds covering the sky. It was not too cold nor too warm, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that the cloudiness might hinder the chances of capturing good photos.
After a while, our trail forked off from the road, leading us across a meadow and finally to the small path we had anticipated. At that point, my wife realized she had forgotten parts of her food and her mobile phone in the car. This was unfortunate, especially since she also wanted to take some photos. Luckily, it wasn’t too bad regarding the snacks as we still had some other food with us.
Enjoying the Scenery
The trail continued along the mountainside, surrounded by an abundance of beech trees with their colorful leaves. At some point, I realized that I had miscalculated the length of the hike. We had discussed two routes the day before, one lasting about three hours and the other closer to five hours. I had the three-hour route in mind, but we were actually on the longer one. Thankfully, it wasn’t a problem – luckily I had packed enough food for the hike!
The trail was genuinely beautiful, lined with small paths bursting with colors, and we were nearly alone on the trail. We encountered only about four fallen trees that we had to climb over or crawl under. We also passed a small section with a couple of waterfalls. When we reached a point where the trees parted, we were greeted by a lovely view across the valley and saw that the clouds had partly disappeared.
The last part of the route rejoined the forest road, leading us to our target destination, an alpine meadow with a couple of houses. As it was the end of the season, the area was quite silent, with just one other family present. We took a break to enjoy some snacks, but I struggled to find good photo opportunities despite trying to capture the scenery.
The Return Journey
For the way back, we chose to stick to the forest road, as I wanted to assess how steep it was, keeping it in mind for a future mountain biking route. The return journey was unremarkable until we were nearly back to the car park. We reached a lovely viewpoint and later walked through a section of beech trees, where the vibrant red autumn colors surrounded us.
Overall, it was a very nice hike. While I felt doubtful about the photos due to the overcast sky, I reminded myself that even if the pictures did not turn out exceptionally well, we had a wonderfully enjoyable day outside.