By Katie
Traveling around Europe with a friend was always on my mind. I grew up listening to my mother tell stories about all the thrilling adventures she had backpacking with her high school best friend one crazy summer during college. Being in Germany for a year abroad felt like too perfect of an opportunity to pass up to finally realize this dream of mine. Although my two weeks of traveling can’t compare to the seven weeks my mother touts, those two weeks were packed full of unforgettable memories and experiences.
When we arrived in Salzburg, Austria, we planned to hike the Untersberg Mountain. This mountain is best known for its feature in The Sound of Music, when, at the end of the movie, the Von Trapps hike the Untersberg to escape the Nazis and get to Switzerland. Ironically, if they had really hiked the Untersberg, as it says in the movie, they would have been walking directly toward Nazi Germany.
Our troubles began when we got off the bus at the foot of the mountain and could not locate the trail we had found online. So as not to waste time, we decided to begin hiking the only trail in sight, the Dopplersteig. Compared to the hike we wanted to do, which was about 2-3 hours long, the Dopplersteig was estimated to be about 6 hours long and rated as difficult. In contrast, the originally planned one was merely moderate. Given that we had virtually no hiking gear and came across the grave of a fallen hiker only 15 minutes into the hike, we knew we were a little in over our heads.
As the hike continued, we grew increasingly more exhausted and were met by simultaneously awe-worthy sights. An hour and a half into the hike, we began to contemplate turning around so that we could be back on the ground in three hours like we had initially planned. However, it hurt too much to give up halfway, and frankly, we were a little too scared to climb down the rain-slicked wooden ladders we had been climbing for the better part of the past hour. We resolved to push on until we reached the peak and then take the cable car back down. This decision was, without a doubt, the best choice we made the entire trip.
Within minutes after we had contemplated turning around, the hike, which to that point had been gorgeous, became stunning. The trees opened up into rolling fields filled with mountain goats, crystal clear waterfalls, and stomach-dropping views. As we continued, the hike also grew increasingly strenuous. As we ascended the 6,473-foot tall mountain, the ground fell away to our right, and we clung to ropes nailed into the side of the mountain on our left. The last 30-minute leg of the hike was spent like this, climbing slippery, foot-wide wooden planks while we passed now uncountable amounts of graves set into the cliffside.
Finally, however, what goes up must come down. After hours of hiking, we reached the summit, or “Gipfel” in German. It is a moment I will never forget, and the emotions I experienced can best be condensed into relief and euphoria. Although this entire hike was not something we had planned on when we woke up that morning, it turned into one of the best memories from my entire two-week backpacking trip.
