More Hiking! This time, the Garmisch Partnachklamm and the Schachen

Inspired by new hiking backpacks and proper hiking boots for Joe, we embarked on another hiking adventure one Sunday in early June. Joe's colleagues shared some books with hiking routes, and we looked through them and chose to hike to the Schachen, which was meant to be a hideaway in the Alps for the king, back in the day. It's a fancy house truly hidden in the hills. There is a path to drive most of the way up, but we chose to hike up. By our estimates it was supposed to be around a 3 hour hike, but it turns out that it was really 3 hours one way. In total, we were walking (through the town, to the hike, the hike, the hike back, back through the town) for probably around 6-7 hours! The first part of the hike takes us past the Winter Olympic grounds (from the 1930s) and through the "Partnachklamm" which is a gorge between the town and the alps. It's a beautiful walk through the gorge, and was a welcome break from the heat of the sun. Once you make it to the other side, there are many hiking trails that split off into various mountains of the Alps and a restaurant, so one could just go through the gorge, have a nice lunch, and go home. For us, of course, that was not the plan! It was certainly a tiring day, but worth it for the views, the exercise, and the experience. We had a great time.  Here are a few of our favorite pictures, and here is a link to the full album, because Sarah took a TON of pictures.

The ski jumps at the older Olympic Park! By today's standards, these feel horribly undecorated. 

Hiking Routes. If you can zoom in enough to find "Schachen" that's where we went :)

A picture while walking through the gorge.

View from the bottom of the gorge!

The view from the far side of the gorge. Amazing! 

There were stacks and stacks and stacks of rocks on the river at the far side of the gorge. Not sure why, but they were there!

Wondering when we'll reach the top, as this seemed plenty high...

The first hour of hiking was pretty much this.

Thinking we were close to the top. It was still another 45 mins.

The Schachen!

Picture with the Bavarian flag at the top of the mountain.

Not the schachen, but a cute little shack nonetheless.

Bavaria.