Snowshoeing on Feldberg

Sorry for the lack of updates. First the plug adaptor I had did not fit in the wall, and so I did not have enough battery power on my laptop to write a decent update, and in general, I have been really busy for the past few days without much time to write an update. But I don't have anything tomorrow morning, so I can stay up a little later to write.

I'll write more about the city and my apartment later, but I wanted to cover the trip we took yesterday (Saturday). IES does a good job, especially in the beginning, of taking us on weekend trips. This weekend we took the train and bus to Feldberg, the tallest mountain in Germany outside of the Alps, for some snowshoeing. It is a mountain in the Black Forest range, about 1,500 meters or almost 5,000 feet tall. It's not at all remote, however, since there's a skiing area on top, and the bus took us to the main building there where we go snowshoes. The weather was gorgeous today- blue skies and quite warm. I was soon just wearing a t-shirt as we hiked up (see picture), which felt strange because it was still very snowy on the ground. We had a guide, a park ranger of sorts. The Feldberg and the ski area are actually in a Black Forest nature preserve, so around the ski lifts it is all forested.

The hiking was initially very strenuous because we basically just walked up the side of the mountain. Having had mono and not doing any exercise for the past, oh, three months made it somewhat difficult, but the guide stopped often to talk about things like the trees and animals the nature park holds. We got to the top, or so I thought, after maybe forty minutes or so. There was an observation tower, but it was closed, sadly. The view without the observation tower was still wonderful, however. Since it was so clear, you could see the Alps rising in the south, with the rest of the Black Forest range before them, lost in cloud and mist. Our guide said views like that are somewhat rare because the mountains get a lot of moisture which usually makes it foggy or cloudy.

As I mentioned above, I thought we were at the top, but technically the highest point was about a twenty minute walk further away-- not a direct climb up, but it was more like another peak of the mountain we had to walk to. The view from there was a little anticlimactic because there is a TV tower as well as a weather station there. Like I said, we were not that remote. Still, this side provided good views of the north and east, and we could see Freiburg and its surrounding mountains.

We walked down a big slope, and by walk I mean ran/fell down. You can take these big, bounding steps in snowshoes and run down in deep snow, which was fun. We ended up at a little guest house and had lunch there-- classic German fare, sausage, bread, and onions (see left for what I had).

Then we continued our hike for an hour or so, first on a packed-down path with lots of cross country skiers and families lugging their children around in sleds. Sometimes these parents would pass me...I am normally not a fast walker, and the snowshoes didn't help, but still, I do not understand how I was that slow. The last part of the hike was actually out in deeper snow and that was fun. Snowshoes are kind of awkward, but they are great in deep snow. We made it back to the main ski lift area, returned our snowshoes, and rode the bus/train back to Freiburg. The trip was a really nice way to see what the surrounding countryside has to offer, and I hope to come back when the snow is mostly gone for some hiking without snowshoes.

(You can see the Alps in the distance in this picture)