On the pul­se of the Alps from Tegern­see to Kitz­bü­hel incl. lug­ga­ge transfer

This was my third crossing of the Alps and I have to say that ever­y­thing was gre­at again.

I was com­ple­te­ly satis­fied with the orga­niza­ti­on of this tour. The maps were very good. The hotels — with one excep­ti­on in Kuf­stein — were very plea­sant. The ser­vice was per­fect. As the wea­ther was also per­fect, this tour was a won­derful expe­ri­ence.   Thank you for the good orga­niza­ti­on and see you next time. 

After crossing the Alps last year, we tack­led the Tegern­see — Kitz­bü­hel rou­te this year. We real­ly lik­ed the rou­te — not quite as alpi­ne — but beau­tiful paths and ever­y­thing was doable. We were unlu­cky with the wea­ther this time, which even meant that we had to skip one day’s stage in the floo­ded town of Kuf­stein. As other par­ti­ci­pan­ts have alre­a­dy poin­ted out, the­re is still room for impro­ve­ment in the map mate­ri­al and the rou­te descrip­ti­ons — espe­ci­al­ly the con­tra­dic­tions in rou­te lengths and alti­tu­de met­res bet­ween the indi­vi­du­al dai­ly descrip­ti­ons and the gene­ral over­view cau­sed con­fu­si­on. We also had the GPS data sent to us in advan­ce, which hel­ped us to over­co­me the pro­blem — wit­hout GPS we would pro­ba­b­ly have strug­g­led and been annoy­ed. The hotels were good to very good, we par­ti­cu­lar­ly lik­ed the Thierseerhof/Hinterthiersee, but also the Hotel Hochfilzer/Ellmau and the Alpenhof/Bayrischzell. The vege­ta­ri­an food was varied, diver­se and good (not always a mat­ter of cour­se). The trans­por­ta­ti­on from the cab com­pa­ny work­ed very well, always on time and fast. We felt well loo­ked after by Feu­er und Eis — espe­ci­al­ly in Kuf­stein, whe­re the onward jour­ney to Ell­mau was orga­ni­zed by cab despi­te par­ti­al clo­sure of the town, power fail­ure and floo­ding. We did­n’t like the fact that our last stage and over­night stay went to Klau­sen and not to Kitz­bü­hel — we would have lik­ed to spend the last evening in Kitz­bü­hel and tha­t’s actual­ly the name of the tour… Con­clu­si­on: A well-orga­ni­zed, beau­tiful vaca­ti­on with a few small com­pro­mi­ses, which we can defi­ni­te­ly recom­mend to .

All in all a beau­tiful and varied tour. Decent hotels. We par­ti­cu­lar­ly lik­ed the rooms and food at the Thier­seer Hof in Hin­tert­hier­see (very nice!), the Hotel Tie­fen­brun­ner in Kitz­bü­hel and the Alpen­hof in Bay­risch­zell-Oster­ho­fen. Howe­ver, the rou­te descrip­ti­ons sent to us could be impro­ved: the paths as descri­bed are dif­fi­cult to find in some places. Some of the sign­pos­ting is miss­ing. Some of the descrip­ti­ons in the text are inac­cu­ra­te or incom­ple­te. A tho­rough revi­si­on is requi­red here! A few more detail­ed examp­les of the pro­blems: On day 3, the bus does not lea­ve from Lau­te­rer Str. in the mor­ning as indi­ca­ted, the­re was no bus stop the­re at all, but from Hotel Schlier­seer Hof or from the train sta­ti­on. Day 6:  The­re is no indi­ca­ti­on that the Jäger­steig from the Wal­ler­alm to the Stei­ner Alm takes two hours due to the natu­re of the trail, despi­te its mana­geable length. From the Kai­ser­alm, the rest of the trail is impos­si­ble to find and not sign­pos­ted. Fur­ther on, the nar­row path to Schön­bichl is dif­fi­cult to find, espe­ci­al­ly as the sign at the start points in the wrong direc­tion (!). Day 7: In Ell­mau, the path from the Mari­en­ka­pel­le cha­pel is not easy to find and is not sign­pos­ted. The­re is an urgent need to impro­ve the rou­te descrip­ti­on!  As alre­a­dy writ­ten in other reviews: Why does­n’t Feuer+Eis pro­vi­de the GPS data after boo­king? This is now stan­dard in all com­mer­ci­al­ly available hiking gui­des and would sol­ve most of the problems. 

Over­all, the tour was varied and beau­tiful with many won­derful pan­ora­mas. Excep­ti­on: the long forest road on day 4, as alre­a­dy descri­bed by Brit­ta, but we were not at all satis­fied with the tra­vel docu­ments. We agree with a num­ber of cri­ti­cal comm­ents in the pre­vious reviews and can only add the following:On day 2 we would have lik­ed an expli­cit indi­ca­ti­on that the hike does not start at our over­night accom­mo­da­ti­on in Bad Wies­see, but on the other side of Lake Tegernsee.On day 3 it would have been hel­pful to know that our hotel, Alpen­hof Bay­risch­zell, is not in the vil­la­ge of Bay­risch­zell, but in Oster­ho­fen. This meant a 5 km detour for us in the pou­ring rain.Day 4: The infor­ma­ti­on in the fly­er that we should take the bus to Kuf­stein at the end of the stage is wrong! The­re is no refe­rence to Hin­tert­hier­see in the fly­er. Howe­ver, our hotel the­re, the Thier­seer­hof, was a high­light of the tour :) The rou­te to Kuf­stein on day 5 was good, and the rou­te descrip­ti­on for the long stage on day 6 is very impre­cise — as alre­a­dy descri­bed by Hei­ko and Bar­ba­ra, Ilka and Thors­ten and also by Wolf­gang, so we can save our­sel­ves the details. Some­thing like this should not hap­pen on such a long rou­te! Why does­n’t Feu­er und Eis pro­vi­de the GPS tracks wit­hout being asked? This would have made the long rou­te much more rela­xed for us, and I would just like to make a small com­ment on day 7 that the detail­ed map of Kitz­bü­hel in the fly­er is com­ple­te­ly meanin­g­less. The return trans­port on day 8 was gre­at: it was a plea­su­re to review the indi­vi­du­al stages of the hiking week in rever­se. In gene­ral, the lug­ga­ge trans­por­ta­ti­on and trans­fer went very well. Our big­gest cri­ti­cism con­cerns the gene­ral tra­vel docu­ments, which were only sent to us by email with refe­rence to coro­na pro­blems at ASI, whe­re we boo­ked the trip, and at the post office(!). The hiking map of the dai­ly fly­er in A4 prin­tout was unusable, on the smart­phone you could zoom in on details, but then of cour­se you had no over­view at all. The last page with the ele­va­ti­on pro­fi­le was miss­ing. The lug­ga­ge tags were not even available in a prin­ta­ble for­mat. It was only after an insis­tent call to Feu­er und Eis that they agreed to lea­ve the ori­gi­nal tra­vel docu­ments at our first hotel. 

Curr­ent­ly boo­ked hotels (loca­ti­ons) did not match the trip descrip­ti­on. The over­view “Detail­ed itin­era­ry” again did not match the maps, which was annoy­ing in part, as the work here was sloppy. 

This most­ly beau­tiful and varied tour led to won­derful high alpi­ne pas­tu­res, whe­re you could usual­ly stop for a bite to eat and enjoy a gre­at view. Despi­te the time of year, the ascent of the Wen­del­stein was cool and rai­ny and took place in fog…:-(. The­re was no view. Ins­tead, a cha­mois emer­ged from the fog and dis­ap­peared again…:-) Moun­tain lakes also fre­quent­ly came into view. I am not awar­ding full points becau­se on the 4th day, towards the end of the hike, we wal­ked 8 km from the Trains­alm along a gra­vel forest road and the con­sidera­ble length of this type of path was not indi­ca­ted in the tour descrip­ti­on. Gra­vel roads are not only hard on the kne­es and are bor­ing if they lead exclu­si­ve­ly through mana­ged forest. Accor­ding to the map, “hiking” along them could have been avo­ided in this case by taking an alter­na­ti­ve forest path via the Per­tal­alm to Schmied­tal. The bus to Kuf­stein, which was plan­ned any­way, would have been rea­ched the­re. Annoy­ing that the alter­na­ti­ve was not poin­ted out here… All in all, a suc­cessful hike with nice hotels and good half-board. We would do the tour again — with slight modi­fi­ca­ti­ons. From our point of view (we were a small group of four fema­le hikers) it is high­ly recommended!