Just a little hike.

Well, today we decided to take advantage of the beautiful fall weather and go for a "hike." We had dinner at a German gasthaus last night and shared a table with a lady who was born in Nashville. She and her husband are avid trekkers and recommended that we ride up the Alpspitze and hike down. We figured, no big deal, just a quick little hike, "we'll be right back." Off we go, a 20 minute walk to the Alpspitze cable car, http://www.zugspitze.de/alpspitze/index_en.php. We got on the car, and began to ride up. Our first clue was the length of this little trip. It took a good 20 minutes to get up the mountain, and the car was swaying big time. So what to do? Get off at the top, and eat your lunch, the only food you have. Lunch always makes you feel better. We walked over to the sign and realized that we were starting our descent from 2050 meters. ( second clue) We really don't know the metric system that well, but it seemed pretty high. We were amazed at the views, and the bright white mountain rocks. (see photo) Down we went, and down, and down, and down. We passed a couple of beer huts, ( third clue) kept going, and finally 2.5 hours later we ended up in the middle of the ski slope at the bottom. (fourth clue, a ski slope at the bottom!) Needless to say our toes were killing us because you literally push them into the end of your shoes all the way down. We don't exactly have our hiking boots stowed in our one bag we brought over, so you can imagine how our feet feel now. No food for a snackie on the way down, no time for beer at a hut, just pure downhill trekking. We even ran down quite a bit of the trail, knocking the average 4 hour hiking time down to 2.5. Good think the Edelweiss has a hot tub. We need it.