Saturday, 2018-09-08: From Mittenwald to the Kaltwasserkarspitze
I rode my bicycle to the main train station of Nuremberg where I entered the 06:29 train to Munich. After entering the train I folded my bicycle and put it into a bag to avoid an extra fee for the bicycle transport.
In Munich I changed to another train to Mittenwald. I met a nice cyclist with a cyclocross bike who wanted to ride from Garmisch Partenkirchen to Rome. He was using a bike-packing setup with only one big saddle bag. Today his destination was Gries am Brenner. We had a nice conversation and he stayed in the train until Mittenwald where we arrived at 09:53.
I unfolded my bicycle while he checked his tire pressure at the bicycle shop at the train station, then we rode together to Scharnitz using the gravel road near the Isar river.
In Scharnitz he continued south towards Seefeld whereas I turned east into the Hinterau valley.
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| Road into the Hinterau valley. |
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| Cairns at the shore of the river Isar. |
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| Place marked as the source of the river Isar. Several small streams flow together here. |
I continued on the gently sloped smooth gravel road until I reached the Kastenalm where I turned left into the road leading to the Roßloch. I continued about 1.5 kilometres on this somewhat bumpier road until I reached the place where the trail to the Kaltwasserkarspitze forks off to the left. I locked my bicycle to a tree, put some stuff into a small backpack and started walking up that trail around 13:00 o’clock.
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| Lower part of the trail to the Kaltwasserkarspitze. |
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| View from the trail to the Kaltwasserkarspitze towards the Moserkarspitze. I think the Moserkarspitze is the mountain in the centre of this picture. |
After a while the path emerged from the dwarf mountain pines and I could see the whole south ridge of the Kaltwasserkarspitze up to the summit. The route is occasionally marked with cairns but it is mostly obvious anyway. There were a few spots of UIAA climbing difficulty II but not that many, actually fewer than I had expected.
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| South ridge of the Kaltwasserkarspitze. A little bit of the summit is visible at the end of the ridge. The mountain at the left side of the picture is the Birkarspitze. |
It was a lot of fun to climb over that ridge but a bit lonely, I didn’t see any other climbers neither on the way up nor on the way down.
Suddenly I noticed that I had forgotten my head light in my bicycle panniers, so Ihurried up a bit to make sure I would not have to descend in the dark.
The weather was perfect and the views from the summit fantastic.
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| View from the summit of the Kaltwasserkarspitze over the south ridge. |
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| View from the summit of the Kaltwasserkarspitze towards the Lalidererspitze. |
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| View from the summit of the Kaltwasserkarspitze. The mountain at the left is the Birkarspitze. |
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| Me on the summit of the Kaltwasserkarspitze. No summit cross, just a wooden pole. |
Although there was no summit cross, there was a metal box with a summit log book. I didn’t count but there were not many entries from this year. One single climber had made an entry last weekend. I made my entry as well and had a short rest eating some dates, then started the descent.
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| While walking down from the Kaltwasserkarspitze (in the Background). |
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| Kaltwasserkarspitze, the ridge on the right hand side is the south ridge. |
To see a different path I decided to descend via the Hochjöchl and not go back all the way over the south ridge. But even when one wants to go to the Hochjöchl one descents a little bit on the south ridge anyway (maybe about 100 metres?). Then there is a gully leading down on the west side which I had noticed already on the way up. There are some cairns which confirm that this is the right way. and one can easily descend through that gully onto a scree slope and then continue to the Hochjöchl. There is no obvious path down from the Hochjöchl into the Hinterau valley, one can practically go anywhere, just down towards the south until one reaches the path coming down from the Birkarspitze (“Adlerweg”).
It was around 20:00 when I reached my bicycle and almost dark. I rode a little bit back past the Kasten Alp towards Scharnitz until I saw a nice stretch of grass next to the river Isar. I decided to bivouac there, the grass was soft and it was nice to have fresh water from the Isar.
Sunday, 2018-09-09: Kasten Alp to Halleranger Alp, back to Mittenwald and then to Kochel
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| The place near the bank of the river Isar where i slept. |
In the morning I cooked red lentils with dried tomatoes, tomato paste and pepper and tea on my alcohol stove, then packed my stuff and rode up again towards the Halleranger Alp. The road is very steep, some sections have a gradient of up to 25%. I could ride the steepest sections only partly, it was not really difficult as the road was still good. But I just didn’t have enough endurance to keep on going until the steepness relaxed. Lots of riders with electric support passed me there.
When I finally reached the Halleranger Alp I had a long rest there with non-alcoholic wheat beer and a piece of Austrian cheese cake (Topfenstrudel).
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| Halleranger Alp with the “Kleiner Lafatscher” in the background. |
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| Chapel next to the Halleranger Alp, “Kleiner Lafatscher” in the background. |
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| Halleranger Alp, “Kleiner Lafatscher” at the left. |
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| Halleranger Alp, the mountain directly above the flag is the Suntiger-Spitze. |
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| “Real” source of the Isar river. |
There is another “Source of the Isar river” only a few hundred metres from the Halleranger Alp. The source further down in the Hinterau valley has water running all year round, the spring near the Halleranger Alp does maybe not have running water all year round.
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| Hallerangerhaus, a hut of the Alpine Club. |
After having a look at the source of the Isar river, I rode to the nearby Hallerangerhaus (a hut of the Alpine Club) and then started to ride back down towards the Kasten Alp.
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| Lafatscher Niederleger. On the way down to the Kasten Alp. |
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| I used this bridge on the way down to avoid a ford where I got my feet a bit wet on the way up. |
From the Kasten Alp I rode back through the Hinterau valley to Scharnitz and then again on the gravel path along the Isar to Mittenwald. It was still early when I reached Mittenwald so I had time to ride a bit more before taking a train home. I rode north the the Walchensee lake and along its west shore, then down the road to Kochel. Unfortunately there was a terrible traffic jam starting in Walchensee almost until Kochel. Therefore I could not descend on the nice winding road as fast as I would have liked to, the cars were going at walking speed and it was difficult to overtake them safely.
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| Ice cream shop in Kochel |
When I reached Kochel I had about an hour until the departure of my train home to Nuremberg. I found nice ice cream shop where I had an ice cream and then a Turkish kebap shop where I got a vegetarian kebap with falafel to eat later on the train.
