Happy, the friendly frog

In the middle of May, we’d already been here in the Tannheimer Valley in Tyrol for a week at the nice little campground at Lake Haldensee, but the challenging hikes we’d planned had to be canceled due to a late snowfall.
But now we’re trying to do these hikes, so we met up with Klytemneistra again at the same campground.
The snow seems to be almost gone and temperatures will reach 30° Celsius during the next days. The only solution is to get up very early and climb high.
So today’s plan was to cross from Mt. Gaishorn to Mt. Rauhhorn. A wonderful hike along a ridge with a few nice climbing sections.
Including the bike ride from the campground to Lake Vilsalpsee, it was an elevation gain of 1,350 meters. Along the way, we saw some sheep that apparently found it too warm as well. They had gathered on one of the few remaining snowfields to cool off. Clever animals!

Once again, we’re spending some days in the Chiemgau Mountains. Even though the mountains here aren’t very high, there are many challenging and lonely trails. One of them was the Lahnersteig up to Mt. Rauschberg.
It’s a steep climb, and you really have to look around to find the trail.

And then we got a secret hint from a local geocacher. She knows a trail that isn’t marked on any map and leads up the shady north face to the summit of Mt. Thorauschneid. That was just what we needed in these midsummer temperatures.
On the way down, we spotted marmots and Scottish Highland cattle (are they on vacation here?).
And in a museum, we learned how people used to live here in former times. From the dangerous work of the lumberjacks to butter-making, there was plenty to see.

Today is our very last day in the Tannheimer Valley.
Along the way, we met a couple of vacationers who were very surprised to see all the snow on the way. “Nobody told us about the snow“ they complained.
They were trying to get to Lake Vilsalpsee but had turned one hour ago in the completely wrong direction.
GoogleMaps really isn’t a good map for navigating in alpine terrain.

At first, Nilpferd couldn't convince them that they were on the challenging ascent to Mt. Gaisspitze and that there is no easy path to Lake Vilsalp from here.
As a last measure to convince them to go back, Nilpferd claimed that he had been a member of the mountain rescue service in his younger years and had brought many similarly inadequately prepared tourists back down to the valley.
The additional information that not all of them had made it back to the valley alive finally convinced them and they decided to return.

We actually wanted to drive home today, but the weather was so nice that we extended our stay at the campground by two more days. Therefore today we had time to climb Mt. Gaichtspitze.
It was clear that the summit could be reached via the south side, but whether the descent down the steep north side, which is secured by steel cables, is possible was not sure. It turned out, that the sections with the steel cables were already free of snow, but after that we still had to cross some very steep snowfields. What an adventure!
As a reward, we enjoyed a delicious chocolate cake and of course a beer on our further descent at the Schneetal Hut.

The snow in the valley has melted again, but there is still snow on the higher peaks. That’s why we didn’t reach the summit we had planned for Monday. A narrow ridge, very steep terrain, and everything was extremely muddy and slippery. We had to turn back 100 meters below the summit. The rest of the trail looked very interesting, and we’ll definitely come back once the snow is completely gone.
But we did see four chamois. Three of them ran away immediately, but one just looked at us briefly and calmly continued to graze.
But today we managed to reach two summits. First we went to Mt. Brentenjoch, where lots of little flowers were blooming along the trail, and then we climbed Mt. Sefenspitze.
The trail isn’t signposted and the cache at the summit is rated with T=4.5. However, if you find the right spot to branch off toward the summit, it’s only T=3.5.