Friday, April 21, 2017

Moving!

Hey folks,

I have moved this little space to a different domain, from now on you can find me on:

labaroudeuseenbalade.com

Thanks for following along!

xx

Elena

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Winterwonderland in the Black Forest


At the beginning of January, the weather gods finally heard my prayers - and it snowed. And it got really cold which preserved the pristine white coat for more than a few hours. Effectively long enough for us to wait for the long weekend of epiphany and make our way to the Black Forest for a sunny and ice cold snow hike.

We followed the trek recommended by Corinna on her website (http://www.outdoormaedchen.de/2015/02/winterwanderweg-sankenbachsee-schwarzwald.html).

We were spoiled with the most perfect winter conditions. Sunshine, a good 30-50 cm of snow and icy temperatures around -10°C.

Although it was a public holiday we only came across a couple of other hikers, we had the path mostly to ourselves, the thick layers of snow seemed to absorb all the noise while we walked along the path, enjoying the silence.

I love days like these when just a little trip, a little outside the box of your everyday life, makes you feel like you were in a faraway place, miles away from your daily routine, where you just live in the moment and marvel at the beauty of nature surrounding you. Just a perfect day!

















Sunday, January 1, 2017

Winter wonderland on New Year's



Hello 2017 - after a few very busy weeks at the end of 2016, I was looking forward to a calm transition into 2017. We spent a cozy evening around the table eating raclette with a lot of gruyere cheese and drinking some good wines with it. The best of evenings in my book!

This morning, I could finally see the sun breaking through the clouds, illuminating the frosted trees on the hills surrounding Heidelberg. Everything looked like it was sugar-coated. Not wasting any time,  I grabbed the camera and made my way up to "Kohlhof" for a sunny winter walk.

When I eventually pulled out my DSLR to capture the sparkling sunlight on the icy branches, I realized that the SD card was missing...so unfortunately, only iphone pictures in this post. I still loved the atmosphere so I'd thought I'd share them anyway.

Happy 2017 everyone. May you be blessed with health and luck and have a successful new year!
















Sunday, October 2, 2016

A weekend in Tyrol: "Reither Spitze" to "Nördlinger Hütte" to "Sollsteinhaus"





So, and before reality and regular working hours at the hospital take me over on Tuesday again, I thought I'd share a few pictures from our last weekend in the Alps this summer.
Initially, we had planned to go a different route to a small self-subsistent mountain refuge, all romantic with cooking over the fire and stuff...but then we forgot the key at home (the classic, as super-organized as we are with our lists and all, we forgot the one essential thing)...so we had to reschedule in a whim and Martin decided to go to the Karwendel in Tyrol instead.

On a sunny and warm Sunday we hiked up from Seefeld in Tirol to the Seefelder Spitze. At first, the path leads you along the ski slopes which, especially to me, as an avid snowboarder, was very sad to see in the summer months. All the ski lift poles and snow canons somehow ruin the views in summer, let alone the destruction of the ground by all the slope preparations...I was a bit  triste so witness all this...


However, we came by a few ponies grazing on the slopes, which immediately lifted my spirits!





Lunch break about half way up when we finally left the slopes and continued on little paths towards the Seefelder Spitze.


Views from the Seefelder Spitze. We hadn't anticipated that much company on the trail, but since you can cover a good part of the ascent by cable car and given the sunny weather on this late September Sunday, there were quite a few people up there....which is why we walked straight on to the path leading us to the Reither Spitze.



The views on the different Karwendel mountain ridges were simply impressive.



All those lime stone formations - simply impressive.



Chocolate break at Reither Spitze. 



Reither Spitze, 2374 m.





Enjoying the last rays of sun around Nördlingen Hütte. On this Sunday night, it was just us and another couple at the refuge, one of the staff girls was playing the guitar and we spent the evening reading mountain magazines, scheming on new routes for next year.




Views down the Inn valley during dinner.



The next morning, we got up at 6 am and decided to climb up to the Reither Spitze again for sunrise. We were rewarded for our efforts with a splendid sunrise and a 360° panorama of all shades of pink and blue.






After breakfast, we started on the "Freiungen Höhenweg" towards the Sollsteinhaus. This trail was more exposed and involved a bit more of climbing. While the climbing itself wasn't difficult, there were quite a lot of parts on the trail that were very exposed so this added to the dimension of the climbing since the whole trail was running along the mountain ridge. In the beginning, I enjoyed the climbing and the more challenging hike, but after about two hours of constantly walking/climbing on that mountain ridge it started to get a little too much. I was fine in the end, but there was a part of it where I was just  scared and a bit overcharged with the terrain and the trail. Naturally, I couldn't be bothered to take out the camera at some point on this trail so there are no pictures documenting the tricky parts unfortunately.



The views were incredible though with the fog slowing rising from the valley.



Dreamteam on tour.



The final stretch to the Sollsteinhaus. Where a "Kaspressknödel" awaited me (which is essentially what kept me going and not surrendering to a little panic attack...). From Sollsteinhaus, it was another 1h 45 min descent down to Hochzwirl where we took a train (every 30 minutes) back to Seefeld. Once back down, the Freiungen Höhenweg didn't look that bad and scary anymore and I was happy and proud I completed it (admittedly, there were not too many options anyway). If you plan on going, just keep in mind that the majority of the "Höhenweg" is quite exposed, so maybe take it a little slow in the beginning so that tiring legs don't interfere with the height and the challenging trail at some point. I guess I was a little too motivated in the beginning, going a little too fast so that my legs were already a little tired when the stress and then fear kicked in - which definitely did not help the situation. Lesson learned though - going to take it a bit easier next time!