Hi all,
my English-speaking friends kept me asking what my blog is all about. I will not be able to translate all my German posts in English as well, therefore I have decided to post once in a while an English summary about the stuff I am doing right now, so that you are at least able to generally follow my quest…
Abstieg
Well, first things first: I decided to hike on the so called „Westweg“ („West-Trail“) end of August/beginning of September. The „Westweg“ is the oldest distant-trail in Germany founded in 1900 and spans about 285 kilometers (about 177 miles) from north to south (Pforzheim to Basel) across the Black Forest. It has been awarded since as one of the best long-range-hiking-trails in Germany and offers a wide range of exciting landscapes and spectacular views into the rhine-valley.
My tour will be divided into 13 day-trips, about 4-8 hours of hiking each day. During my tour I will have to climb several peaks mounting up to a total altitude of about 10.000 meters (33.000 feet). You can imagine from the numbers that this trip will be quite a challenge and therefore I am already quite excited about it.
Blick ins Tal von Burg Rötteln
However, before you are awestruck, I need to tell you that I simplyfied my challenge to some extent by booking hotels for each night along the trail, so I do not have to sleep in a tent (and carry equipment for sleeping outdoors). Furthermore, the hotels provide the handy service that my big luggage is transported from hotel to hotel. That way I only have to carry what I need during the day for my hike. In doing so, I can have much more equipment with me without the need to carry each of it every day accross the Black Forest.
So you see, it is not such a big deal after all. Nevertheless, I expect that this tour will still be quite a challenge for a pencil-pusher like me…;-)
Anyway, my blog now tries to cover the different steps of my preparation for the trip as well as to capture my impressions during the trip itself.
Thus, I will explain on my pages for example my packing-lists, how I prepare myself for the long tour, tests of my equipment, day-trips which I will take in my region and finally how the long tour worked out in the end.
Update: In the meantime I have finished my trip on the Westweg, if you want to find out where I was each day, please got to this page…
Sonne auf der Wiese
Links for further reading: