Up the Mountain

Taking the gondola up Mount Wank is another Rachael suggestion we loved. A family pass up and back is 60 euros.

“Should we just hike up?” Chris asked. I narrowed my eyes. “The comments I found online said the hike down could take several hours… so… I’m not sure we’re prepared to do that….” It was already after noon.

We decided to take the gondola. For the first five minutes we sailed over the trail and thought, “Oh man, we totally should have hiked!” But after we kept going up… and up… and up… for 20 minutes… I was remembering how/why I’m afraid of heights (specifically how I’m afraid of falling in a gondola carriage and then crashing all the way down the mountain in an out-of-control spinning gondola death trap), while simultaneously being glad I wasn’t hiking that steep mountainside with my kids and their snotty head colds. We were all happy to disembark at the top.

Here, we were surrounded by stunning mountain peaks in all directions. Three easy hiking loops, a playground, and a café perch atop Mount Wank, dotted with melty patches of snow in September. All of Garmisch spread out below us. The slopes we like to ski in winter were green and lush the next mountain over. The high jumps from long-ago Olympics (and the 2016 movie Eddie the Eagle) swooped at the base of the mountains.

We trotted down a trail and Isaac found a satisfying hobby of drop-kicking snow. Eloise and I nibbled the icy edges of a sparkling snow pile. Then I read a sign saying the hilltop is a horse pasture all summer. While the horses were nowhere around, little piles of evidence of their summer stay dotted the area. Shockingly/thankfully, we did not get upset stomachs from the horse poo snow we consumed.

The gondolas stop running at 5pm, but we were able to have a quick beverage in the café surrounded by snow (which we did not sample) before heading down. I have to say, little chalets set up everywhere you want to get something to drink is really fantastic. Well done, Europe. I’m not sure how Germans get anything done!

We could have spent longer up here for sure, but this was a wonderful way to spend a few hours on a sunny afternoon in late summer!