Watzmannkar Snowshoe

Published on 2008-2-3 by Michael Stanton

Watzmannkar

February 3, 2008

Uli, Austin, Danno and I drove in Danno's capacious automobile to Schoenau on the Koenigsee. We had a great time first walking up a long road to enter the Watzmannkar. Finally at a hut we could use snowshoes. Traversing a steep hillside we admired the views, then set to the hard work of breaking a trail up in fresh, beautiful powder snow. Uli was "the bear," breaking trail for long periods. We broke out of the trees into the awesome valley, with the walls of the Kleine Watzmann and Hocheck on either side of us. Beautiful streams of spindrift snow came down from the walls at times.

We were hoping to climb one of the Watzmannkinder, one which skiers were also ascending. But we didn't have avalanche rescue gear, so it was better to be cautious and call it a day at a point where the slope angle reached 30 degrees. Instead we went into a side valley to eat our lunch in the sun. There was plenty of wind though, which made it cold!

We ran down many slopes on the way back. At one point Austin crashed into me and sent me flying. I worked out my pent-up fury by trying to do the same to Uli, but he tripped on his snowshoes and crashed without my help. Haha! His clothing was very "sticky" somehow where snow was concerned. He got up covered in powder which lasted for a long time!

We all really enjoyed it up there, and promised to come back. Uli did a technical route on the Kleiner Watzmann, and pointed it out to us. Some of us want to go do it too!

Having really wanted to see the Koenigsee from a great height, I harranged us to go up to a viewpoint above the hut for it. Danno threatened to push me (and Uli, for good measure) off if the view wasn't incredible. Apparently it passed muster. We spread out my map and identified peaks for 15 minutes. We looked at the people wandering around at St. Bartholomae far below. They staggered around like zombies.

The road walk back was pretty long and tiring. We went for pizza which was marred only because Danno finally contracted the stomach virus that his son had two nights before. Oh man...

But we had a great day. Thanks to Austin for taking the pictures! Thanks to Uli for the Man Tea!

Low in the Watzmannkar.

Having lunch in the sun.

Uli had an "accident" (running from me).

End of the day above the Koenigsee.