Zugspitze Day 2: The Final Summit
Good morning! We woke up in our hut at 6:30 AM, along with our other roommates. We got dressed and packed up our things, and then went outside to eat a small breakfast while enjoying the view.
The sight really never got old. The temperature was around 5 Celcius, but it actually felt warmer. I don’t really understand why, but it was nice.
Then, once basically everyone had already left, we started our day of climbing. Today we would make it to the Zugspitze summit. The signs said it would take around 3 hours, we were simply determined to get there, regardless of time.
From our breakfast area, it was basically all uphill. We had to follow the loose gravel switchbacks again, and this time there weren’t a lot of grass patches or large rocks to make the climb easier. The good thing about staying in the hut that we did was that we had done a lot of climbing the evening before, so today wouldn’t be as lengthy. We are definitely glad we chose to do the hike this way.
At the beginning of today’s hike, I had to take a break every few minutes until my legs had warmed up enough to feel better with the hiking. After a little bit, we were finding our groove more, and were able to hike for 20-30 minutes before taking a small break. We were making slow progress. Eventually, our surroundings just became gravel-covered-ground surrounded on all sides by mountain views. It felt like being on Mars. Everything was so desolate and seemingly lifeless. Except for the bee that followed us for 2 hours from the hut!
We did eventually see some snow near the mountain cliff sides, and even got to walk across a larger patch of snow (actually a glacier) at one point. Lucas read that before the year 2000, the plateau we were on was covered in snow all year round, but since then, the snow has always melted every summer. The Zugspitze mountain actually has 3 different ski resorts on it, in this same area, which we were approaching. Imagine skiing on those steep slopes!
After about 2.5 hours, we reached the “final climb”. This last ascent was about as close to just climbing a cliffside as you could get, without needing actual rock climbing equipment. The signs said we would be doing this climb for an hour. For us, that meant probably closer to 2 hours. The first part of the climb was just covered in the loose granite rocks. So for 45 minutes were scrambled up this practically sheer granite gravel-covered slope. There was somewhat of a switchback trail, but it was easy to lose, and sometimes it just seemingly disappeared altogether. Sometimes, we just had to make our way up on our own.
Lucas was still carrying the camera and tripod at this point. He didn’t want to back down from the challenge of holding it the whole hike. I couldn’t believe how he could manage, considering how hard it was for meto make it up the loose gravel slope, even with both hands available to me. You also had to be careful about your footing or you might tumble down or cause a small rock slide, endangering the people below you! We were pretty isolated at this time though, so the dangers of rocks were not as large for us and others.
Eventually, we had made it up this steep loose rock hill, and were greeted by a pretty much sheer cliff with steel cables attached into the side as something to hold onto while you climbed. Again, we were not far off from just straight up rock climbing. We ran into a big problem here, though. It was clear by looking at the cable and the steepness, as well as the smoothness of the cliff side, that both hands would be needed to safely traverse this part. Lucas constantly had one hand full with the camera and tripod, which could not be put in our backpacks, they were too full.
On top of that, where we were currently standing, we didn’t have much room to maneuver in order to make space in our backpacks. It seemed like we were actually pretty stuck. I had also already started going up the cable, and combing back down was a bit scary, so it was hard to help Lucas in any way. I finally had an idea, though! It truthfully probably saved the whole hike.
Lucas’ backpack had a strap across his chest, and the tripod could perfectly hang on that strap while also being strapped against Lucas. So that is what we did. Lucas strapped the tripod and camera to his chest, and we continued our climb. He had the camera rolling this entire time. We wanted to capture the whole thing!
After climbing the cliffside with our safety cable for 45-60 minutes, we reached the top ridge or spine of the mountain. It had a bench, and so we stopped for lunch. On one side of us was Austria (at the bottom of a steep cliff), and on the other side was the valley and plateau we had just traversed over the last 2 days. I remember needing to calm my nerves. It was shocking to see the sheer drop on both sides of us, and my nerves were definitely a bit fried from the climbing we had just done.
With some food and calmed nerves, we continued the last little bit of the climb to the summit. It took us about 15 minutes, but we finally reached the metal staircase that would bring us to the Zugspitze platform. At the food of the stairs we had to take one last little break. We were exhausted, and needed a minute to compose ourselves. We were also trying not to rush too much so as not to develop any kind of altitude sickness.
Finally, we made it up the staircase to the top!!! What I wasn’t expecting: there was this HUGE crowd. You might think the top of an almost 3000 meter high mountain would be a bit less busy, but in this case you would be very wrong. The top was filled with tourists, most of which were not hikers at all, but simply people that had taken a cable car to the top. We walked around the top a little bit to see some views of where we had been, and could even see the beautiful blue Eibsee from the top.
Technically, we were not done with our climb yet. Atop the Zugspitze is a golden cross, situated on a small ridge. To really call our climb complete we had to reach this cross. However, we chose not to do this. The ridge that the cross sits on is very small, and so many people try to get to it that there is a very long line, on a very narrow path to get to it. Since there were so many people who had traversed this cliff, it was also likely very slippery from all of the feet that had walked across it.
At this point we were tired, our nerves were fried, and we were not interested in waiting in a long line to somewhat dangerously get to a golden cross and then fight the crowd back to the platform. Nope. We had just hiked an entire mountain valley and then summited the tallest mountain peak in all of Germany, and felt completely and totally accomplished. The fact that the majority of the people had not climbed to get to this point said enough about the work we had done, we were happy.
Happy and fed, we paid € 30 each to take a one-way cable car down to the Eibsee, a pretty lake. From the summit, you can take a cable car down to Austria, or down to the Eibsee in Germany. We had no plans to go to Austria, so obviously we went to the Eibsee. These cable cars are so high and long, they have even set world records!
It took around 5 minutes to descend from the mountain. We landed near the Eibsee, where it was surprisingly hot. I felt somewhat devalued because I did so much work going up, that a 5 minute cable car ride down kind of devalued the glory a little bit. But we also did not have time to hike back down the mountain. We had to be somewhere else the next day.
We then walked down a path along the lake, and found a nice little spot to dip our feet. The lake is a beautiful crystal clear blue, and we were in the shade, where the lake was a bit cold. We sat on a rock with our legs in the water for around 30 minutes. It really felt nice on our tired legs. It kind of numbed them, but in a good way. Like those ice-baths you see athletes bathing in after a hard workout.
The lake offers a lot of activities like swimming, paddleboarding, kayaking, canoeing, and pedal boats. We didn’t have any swimwear at this point, and didn’t want to get our clothes wet, but we would love to go back some day! It really is so beautiful.
After visiting the lake, we bought some train tickets to take us back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen (where our Airbnb was) and picked up our car at the 1936 Olympic Ski-Jump parking lot, and went to the Airbnb. We got there and literally just fell onto our beds, completely exhausted. But our journey was well worth it! How often do you get to say you summited the tallest mountain in Germany?!
Video of our final summit below!
Extended cut talking more in depth about our experience below!