Westweg Day 9: Hotel Am Bach, Hinterzanten – Hut Kinney

Summer is fading. The colors slowly started to turn. The change was most visible in the open meadows bellow Feldberg, the highest mountain in Germany North of the Alps where the grasses were golden and blueberry bushes carried a touch of red.

Today felt like hiking in the mountains. The trail was narrow once we left Hinterzanten behind and rocky, and once in a while there was a stream and short wooden platforms to cross. Bellow us we could see a lake, one of the alternate routes would run down and then back up on the other side of the lake. We chose to stay high and soon the forest opened into meadowlands of the treeless summit.

Feldberg is a popular destination. There is a gondola one can take from Seebach and many people chose to do so today, though the views were little hazy and the Alps were not visible at all.

From Feldberg the terrain slopes downhill for quite a while and then it rolled mostly flat. We walked through cow pastures, on couple of them the cows were close to the trail and curiously watched us walk by.

The stage ends at Wiedener Eck, a hotel on a busy paved road. We considered briefly to book a room. At €139 it was more expensive than what we like to spend though and dinner prices were also much higher than our other stops had been so in the end we decided to push and camp at one of the shelters we saw on our map, about 4 kilometers away.

Some of the shelters we saw along the trail were very nice. Some not so much. This one could use a little bit of maintenance. It was small and dump inside and so we pitched our tent on a parking area just next to the shelter, pretty much the only flat spot we could find and we cooked ramens and hoped the road that’s just couple hundred feet from us won’t stay super busy during the night.

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NOTES: August 27, 2019

Grocery store at Hinterzanten opens at 9:30 a.m.

There is no food available at Feldberg but you can take the gondola down to Seebuck and then back.

There was a hut about 0.4 km from the summit of Feldberg but it was not opened today.

Two restaurants were open between the summit and the end of the stage at Wiedener Eck. The second one was also a hotel.

Wiedener Eck is also a hotel and restaurant. It’s very expensive though. Schnitzel with fries was €22.50, rumpsteak €27.00 Accomodation was listed on booking.com as $139.00 today.