Exciting World

So, on Sunday, Anna and I decided to go for another hike, since we did not freeze during the first. So we took another suggestion from Frankenlandler, this time chosing Happurger Stausee and hohler Fels, which I'm going to losely translate to "Reservoir of Happurg and hollow rock". (If you follow the second link you'll find a PDF and GPX description of the hike, the latter of which can be opened on your phone, for example with Komoot, to guide you using GPS)

By the way, if you want to know how to get there, I've placed a needle on Google maps for you!

This time, though, we did not follow his track exactly, since we took a wrong turn right in the beginning. So we actually started this (circular) hike in the wrong direction, and then went even more wrong, because I thought I could figure the way out without checking the map.

So, at first, we had to climb up the mountain pretty steeply, which was not entirely easy. There is a spring at some point, which trickles a tiny little stream of water across the way. Add -15°C, and you have a thick layer of ice covering the path over about 20 meters and that at a steep slope! But we managed...

Then we took that wrong left turn, which resulted in our passing two benches that are perfect for a short pause in the beginning rather than in the middle of the hike. Hiking next to streams of water, through the forest and across clearings on snowy tracks was quite amazing, especially since in many places humidity from the air had frozen on rocks, leaves and branches and formed large beautiful crystals, which we took quite some time photographing.

After a while we realized that we were no longer ascending the mountain, but rather going downhill, even though we had not yet seen the main attraction of the hike, the "Hohler Felsen". So now I did get my phone out and we saw that we had gone in the wrong direction for quite some time. But we couldn't miss that rock, so we turned right around.

At this elevated hour (probably like 11am) a lot of other hikers had arrived in the area, so there was a lot of "Hallo", "Hi" and "Servus" going on😄. And up at the destination, at a great viewpoint, it was actually quite crowded. Luckily, we did find an empty spot right at the tip of the rocks, where we had the perfect view and enjoyed our picknick. We could even see the parking spot and our car. In the morning, we had been the second car to arrive, and Anna even practiced her drifting skills down there, before we got started. Now we witnessed a curious performance: In very regular intervals, new cars arrived at the fully occupied parking spot, took a turn or two, and then had to leave because there were no more spots left. And then the next car came. Then a campervan. Two cars. And so on. I guess the percentage of cars that arrived when a lot had actually emptied was in the low single digits. And there was a regular pilgrimage of Valentine's day crazy people circulating around the lake, which we also had to walk around, were we to follow the route we had picked out. But that was too busy for us, so we rather continued in another direction. Where we lost the way again. But this was a good thing, because there were less people around and we had the forest to ourselves, most of the time.

Eventually, we got tired and decided we had seen enough and turned back towards the car, generously generating one empty parking lot for another lucky hiker...

So my recommendations for this hike? Don't do it on days when a lot of visitors must be expected. Or, if you do, start early!😉