Alps by day-trip - Rotwand and Spitzingsee

The kids are starting school today (and are nervous!) so life here will change somewhat now, I'm sure.  But before that, I wanted to share one last series of pictures from our summer adventures.

The Alps are so close to Munich that it's remarkably easy to do a hiking day-trip.  The weather last Sunday was marvelous again, so we decided to climb a smaller "foothill" mountain called Rotwand and invited along the oldest 3 (of 5!) kids of Jan and Nina von Delft.  (We had known Jan at Cornell, and had met the family the previous weekend, but he was now in California for two weeks and I think Nina was happy to have us bring along Leah, 13, Maya, 11, and Max, 9.)

By the way, half the population of Munich also thought that it would be a lovely day for a day hike to the Alps and the train was crowded.  We were lucky to get seats, but many people were standing (squashed) in the aisles for the hour plus.  This worried us a little, but we did get on the bus connection that takes you over a saddle to the Spitzingsee and the start of the trail.

The beginning of the hike was a relatively easy, mostly on wide and smooth trails, although quite steep in parts.  There were the Alps-ubiquitous dairy cows along parts of the trail, much to Benjamin's delight.

On the way up we saw a few farmers' huts (used in summer while looking after the cows!)

some with rocks on the roof to keep it from blowing off...

Getting near the "Hütte" for lunch... hooray!

Lunch in the mountains, ahhh.  This place was crowded, but still it was wonderful to have an Apfelschorle (apple juice and bubbly water) and some hot food.

 About 20 minutes after lunch, we can still see the Hütte below

 and for some of the kids it was a pretty tiring climb to the peak

 but well worth the view!

In the first half of the day, we had gained 800 m.  After the peak, we then set off across a meandering and relatively easy path along the side of some "hills" for an hour or so of perfect hiking.  It really felt like wandering in(to) a post-card!

Because we had some tired (but happy) kids our our hands, we took the cable-down the steepest part of the descent (for a cheap, family rate - they thought all five kids were ours I guess).  Then, near the bottom of the trail, we had half an hour before the bus arrived to jump into the (chilly, alpine!) Spitzingsee.

A very nice way to spend a sunny Sunday!