GERMAN HILL AND MOUNTAIN HIKING
23rd June: Farchant - Farchanter Steig - Eckenberg - Wank - Rosswank - Wank - Farchant
Start/Finish at Farchant 670m
Highest point: 1780m, Wank summit.
Distance: circa 20 kms
Weather: humid and cloudy after overnight storms.
Vertical altitude gain: circa 1350m
Time: 8 hrs 50 mins
My Wednesday rest day gave a chance to recover from the hot and humid hike to Notkarspitze, and a chance to enjoy a prolonged thunder storm during the evening. One that had left the weather decidedly damp, misty and a fair bit cooler when I checked early on the Thursday morning.
I was uncertain how long it would take to see the low cloud and mist clear, (it actually took nearly all day, so didn't want to hike up a higher peak to only see the inside of a cloud! So I decided to walk up the Wank mountain from the hotel via the Farchant Steig, and was soon crossing the Loisach river swollen by heavy overnight rain with the bulky form of the Wank already visible behind it
But the low cloud drifted back in, with no distant views for a long time. Just the easy zig zag path up though the usual quite dense forest for the area, passing a model water mill at one point on the Farchanter Steig.
The prospect of doing a "valley to summit" hike at 400 metres an hour rate spurred me on. Maybe all that training at home on the North Downs was paying off! Despite it being the easiest mountain track I've yet hiked on I was delighted when the misty image of the Eckenberg summit cross, (right), appeared above me.
A quick calculation showed I had reached the Eckenberg summit, (NE of Wank), at an ascent rate of just over 400 metre an hour. Not a rate I will do again for a while on the harder mountain tracks I normally use, but at least I felt happy in the gloomy weather. A further short stroll got me to the Wank mountain summit a few metres higher than the Eckenberg.
The low cloud never fully lifted while I was on the summit area. But it rolled back just enough to reveal the Hoher Fricken, (left), and part of the Krottenkopf. It also showed the very well laid out walking area on top of the Wank. The mountain has a broad summit area that is easily reached by a very popular cable car from the valley.
I spent some time on the well laid out summit area waiting for better weather that did'nt arrive, so I walked down past the cable car station, and another slope before climbing to the undistinguished summit of the Rosswank. On the way back the clouds rolled away enough to show the cable car station and the large Wankhaus.
The track down was zig zags and some longer straight parts, seen in the middle and top left above. Much lower down I took a rest on the Farchanter Steig, and spent a pleasant 20 minutes talking to a local hiker who caught me up. Before I finished my descent into a pleasantly warm Farchant at around 24 degrees C.