Day 7 – A Failed Invasion Of Germany
Today’s Blog Entry
On Friday, our last day on the trails, we had planned to ski from Schnarnitz across the border into southern Germany towards Mittenwald. We knew that the highway and the railway into southern Germany were closed due to avalanche warnings (that much we knew from the Internet) but we did not know that the ski trails were closed as well until we got off the bus at the Tourist Bureau in Scharnitz that morning.
We had assumed that because the trails ran along the relatively open valley floor we’d be OK, but apparently that was a bad assumption! So we consulted the trail maps and decided to ski south from Scharnitz, perhaps all the way back to Seefeld via the A12 Scharnitz, A11 Bodenalm, and B9 Triendlsage trails. This would be similar to our outing on Monday, but we knew that there was a beautiful lodge in the forest mid-way up the B9 that would make a great place to stop for lunch.
That was a great plan, except it didn’t take into account that we’d been pushing fairly hard all week and our batteries were running a bit low … we finished the A12 Scharnitz and A11 Bodenalm trails (i.e. the level trails) but by the time we got to the base of the first big hill on the B9 Triendlsage trail we both knew that it wasn’t going to happen. At that point we turned back north and headed for GiessenBach.
This turned out to be a sprint to the finish as we knew that if we didn’t catch the 11:16 AM bus it would be at least two hours before the next one would stop. Turns out that we made it in plenty of time, but a lot of other folks seemed to have similar transport challenges that morning as the bus was standing room only most of the way back to Seefeld. This was the only time during the entire trip that we saw a bus even remotely close to full.
After getting off the bus at the Bahnhof in Seefeld we walked back to our apartment to get out of our ski gear. We then walked back into town for a nice lunch and some unexpectedly unsuccessful souvenir shopping. It was literally impossible to find a cap, T-shirt, sweatshirt, or fleece with an Austrian or Seefeld logo. We thought that this was quite strange, but in retrospect this low profile aspect of the area’s tourism is one of the reasons that we really liked the area.
After our non-shopping experience we stopped back by the Bahnhof to see if there was any news about re-opening the mountain passes northbound towards Garmisch (and Munich). This was key information as it dictated our travel plans for the next day.
If the passes were going to be open then we needed to be at the Bahnhof a little after 7 AM to catch our train. This would put us into Munich around 9:30 AM. If the passes were going to be closed then we’d have to re-route our travel southward through Innsbruck and then loop back towards Munich via the border crossing at Kufstein. We’d leave Seefeld two hours later and not get into Munich until 12:30 PM. Not a big deal, really, but we wanted to know so we could plan accordingly.
Best we could tell from the Bahnhof signage (and from the OBB website that we checked from the apartment with our iPad) was that there weren’t going to be any updates regarding the pass status for another 24 hours, so we interpreted that to mean that the passes would still be closed and that we were headed back via Innsbruck and Kufstein. This made for a much more relaxed start the following morning.
Today’s Map
Today’s Photos
