The trails were lovely, the views spectacular, and morale was high for the first few hours. Sometime around two and a half hours into the descent to Oberammergau, however, as feet began to complain, the group happiness index began to drop, and by Eschenlohe there was a noticeable sentiment of "Null Bock auf Nix" (no desire to do anything).
This feeling was not helped by the fact that, as was the case last year when I did my test hike, none of the three Gaststaetten in Eschenlohe was open For various reasons (terribly maintained hiking paths, inaccurate signs (where else can one walk for 40 minutes in the direction of X from one sign saying "3 hours to X" only to find another sign saying exactly the same thing?), the fact that everything is always closed when I am there, and the singularly unwelcoming appearance and behaviour of the inhabitants), Eschenlohe is not my favorite village in Oberbayern :-).
After a second lunch we pushed on, crossing the wide flat valley of the Loisach to Plaicken where the final challenge of the day -- a 600m climb to and descent from the Laberjoch awaited us. The climb goes along paths that at first have a medieval feel to them and go down from there reaching a nadir of true Dark Ages awfulness just before you reach the top. Russell, poor fellow, was suffering big time by now so I sang him a few freely adapted verses of "Summertime", which seemed to cheer him up. Here's an example, as well as I can remember it:
Summertime, and the hiking is easy.
The trail is smooth, and your pack is light.
Your legs are strong, and your butt is good-looking,
So Russell, don't you cry.
And there was more of the same. At least it had the effect of getting Dave to start singing something else (perhaps to shut me up?), which then led to Russ singing... and the crisis passed.
Dave, by the way, as I have said before, is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. One of the principles of hiking in a group is that no-one should ever be allowed to trail behind alone. There should always be one other person who hikes with them. Dave always plays this role and is a great comfort to whomever is feeling weak and slow at that moment.
Dave is also a remarkable hiker in other ways. For example, he doesn't hike like other people: he is more like a dog, stopping to take photos then running to catch up; running ahead to take a photo of the group then waiting for us to catch up. In fact he seems to run much more than he actually hikes, and this despite carrying some 16kg on his back and a huge honking camera with telephoto lens in his arms. He is a remarkable fellow.
After 9 hours and 20 minutes of hiking, almost 11 hours after leaving Walchensee, we arrived at Oberammergau. Although it seems to have rained almost everywhere else in Bavaria yesterday, it didn't rain on us. But we were exhausted anyway. The following day was to be (and as I write this, now is) a rest day, and it couldn't have come at a better time.
5 down, 86 to go....
