„What a day!“ would be my most probable answer if I were asked how my day was. And that‘s it, I most likely wouldn‘t say much more about it. But I decided to write a blog and therefore I give you a few more details. Plain hard-facts first:
⁃ 18 km
⁃ 6 hrs.
⁃ 600 m elevation gain
⁃ 400 m elevation loss
Well, that doesn‘t sound too interesting, so here are the soft-facts. This morning, right before start I met this guy on the camp-ground; we chatted a little bit about this and that, where I‘m from and where I‘m heading. To my words of today‘s destination he adviced me to take a little detour in order to be rewarded for some magnificent views and no tourists, but it can be dangerous he said. I promised him to look out for the detour and not to take unnecessary risks. It was only 3 km into today’s hike and when I found it I decided to go for it because, well you know, that’s how livin‘ is done. The first 15 min. where more or less steep downhill but doable. I came to a plateau, where I found a few rock-climbers with their gear enjoying themselves conquering the rocks around us. And I enjoyed the beautiful views I came to experience. At that point I should have turned around and go back to the trail but I decided to follow the narrow path alongside the rocks going uphill to my left and steep going downhill on my right. Sometimes I had less than 30 cm of width before a drop of I don‘t know because I didn‘t dare to look. I had to hold myself close to the rocks on my left and my heavy backpack of 16 kgs, I know it‘s actually too heavy but I‘m not going to discuss that now, always trying to pull my away wasn‘t much help at all. As long as I could see marks of previous people being here I felt save, I thought. I crossed rocks, where I thought „Oh, one way jumps“ as I jumped and climbed downhill. After about 20 minutes of this adventure I saw this sign saying something like „No trespassing! Danger! Falling rocks!“ As I just recently played all three parts of Batman on my PS4 I decided to keep on going because, well you know „I‘m Batman!“ (imagine that with a dark, deep voice). Another 10 minutes later I was trapped. (Now imagine Batman with a soft, whiny, mimimi-voice). A wall in front of me, a wall to my right, a scary drop on the left and my backpack felt heavier than ever. I couldn‘t go any further. Slowly I turned around trying to find my way back. But that wasn‘t easy at all. Not only was it hard to see which way I came but also it was hard, sometimes not doable to take the same way back. I got a little lost…
Now to make a long story short, I did find back to the trail. I don‘t know how long it took me as I had to focus on my steps and keeping my nerves together. Once I was back on trail I was already pretty exhausted and I was only 3 km into today‘s hike. After a little break I kept on going. I passed the Bastei (do some research of it on the internet for yourself!) and enjoyed some more magnificent views of the Sächsischen Schweiz and the Elbsandsteingebirge. I visited old ruins of a castle build around year 1320 into those mountains. As you can imagine there were tons of tourists driving up their with their cars, smelling all nice and being all clean – I wasn‘t. I left this part behind me and all I got was steep uphill, steep downhill.
After a strenous, nerve-wrecking but beautiful day I finally arrived in Hohnstein. I checked in at a campground, took a shower and had dinner. For the rest of this trip I stay on trail because that‘s how longer livin‘ is done! 🙂