While the Zugspitze has a solid and respectable reputation among the German population, who proudly rarely fail to remark upon its status as the highest peak in the country, the German mountaineering community shares an equally immutable, objective, and sadly distant perspective: it is the last place you want to be for a hike in Germany.
And, in all honesty, I would agree.
Its popularity and accessibility make it truly a mountain for everyone. The story would boringly end here if it were not for a nevertheless. While getting to the top is not, in itself, a great feat of strength, you can even take a train that cuts through the mountain and brings you within a couple of hours of the summit, doing it from the bottom in one day is undoubtedly tough.
And that is what four other guys and I wanted to achieve.
We decided to start from Ehrwald and hike to the top through the Gatterl route, probably the easiest trail to the summit. But since we were there in the midst of October, the final 500 meters of elevation were already snowy and occasionally icy, which made the ascent feel like a real adventure.
The numbers, in the end, were simple enough: 5 hours and 42 minutes to the top, around 19 kilometres covered, and 2,289 meters of elevation gained.
The experience itself was less simple.
It was painful. We were incredibly fast. But we did it.
A real challenge.
Two brave members of the group, not me, escaped the premature glory of reaching the peak and decided to walk down instead of taking the cable car. That may have been the boldest choice of the day.
However impressive the physical challenge was, and unimpressive the Zugspitze may seem to some, that is not really the reason I wanted to write this adventure down.
The reason is the team.
It was our first hike together, one of many, and hopefully only the beginning. Maybe the next one will be 3,000 meters of elevation. Or maybe, finally, a well-deserved lazy walk by a lake.
In both cases, I am sure it will be memorable.
