No sweet without sweat at Hohegeiß!

Christina/ May 16, 2021/ The daily grind

We are on the move at the mountain village Hohegeiß which is one of the highest places within the Harz Mountains with 642 metres above sea level. Right at the arrival we smell the fresh and clean air of this area. The village is located in the middle of mountain meadows, forests and “Dicke Tannen”. And today’s walk is just all about these voluminous plants. And I don’t know how we did it again but at the end of our hiking trip we made out of 14 km 25 km with an difference in altitude of 640 metres. All in all quite a sportive undertaking.

The weather is fine after all
The weather forecast for this saturday is quite bad. There is a chance of scattered showers and even thunderstorm on the late morning which are supposed to last until afternoon. The forecasted rain probabilty is about 80 %. Still, we are brave enough to start even though and arrive at Hohegeiß around noon. Just upon our arrival the first shower comes down – no matter, we are still in the car.

At first we have a hard time to find the former hotel “Dicke Tannen”, which is our starting point. We address to a local and get to know the house is being inhabited by Russians by now. Oh and that is supposed to be our parking lot;-) Well, at least we are on the right way. We park the car above the former hotel and try to orientate ourselves.

The sun comes through the clouds. At first we descent towards the natural monument “Dicke Tannen”. From there we follow the way to the tavern “Wolfsbachmühle”. On our way we enjoy the landscape and the view onto the blooming mountain meadows.

iminent danger
Behind us some really dark clouds are gathering and we think about looking for sheltr at the tavern, but up to now it is dry. Suddenly we discover a bunch of archers on our right side. The sportsmen aim their arrows at plastic beavers and boars. We get an unpleasant feeling and really do hope that they know what they are doing. Finally the group climbs up a hill and leaves our path.

Just a little bit later we enjoy a break on a bench. As we turn into the Wolfsbachtal path we are again surprised by a short but heavy rain shower. We fetch our umbrellas quickly and a couple of minutes later it is over and the sun shines again.

towers of desire
And suddenly it is emerging: two ugly skyscrapers in the middle of this loveley landscape. Whereas Susanne and I are appalled by this disfigurement of the environment we spot at the same time Christian’s yearningly view in his eyes. The roof-terrace together with allegedly nice view from the top are appealing to him. Apparently our view fell onto the so called “Panoramic” of Hohegeiß, holiday apartments with swimming-pool. Theoretically Christian is already there.

We are heading towards our next hiking highlight, the “Neuer Teich”. At our arrival we are in for a little surprise. We discover a sign stating: Zoger Wasserfall. We follow the sign to the right and discover that the way is not to the right but to the left and then straight. We suddenly hear the sweeping water.

This is a hidden treasure to us, we pause for a moment. Shortly after we left the place another heavy rain shower comes down, but once again it is a very short guest performance. Reaching the Steinbachtal we wonder how many kilometres we have already walked? I take a look at our map of trails and realized that we did not even manage half of the way so far. Weird, were did we go wrong?

The point of origin
From the “Neuer Teich” we the “Alte Poststraße”, a former connecting road between Hohegeiß and Braunlage. Via a very nice small path we move on. At the next crossing once again the signposting is missing, so that we climb up a hill in vain finding ourselves on the “Kaiserweg”. As you where! We cross the federal highway in direction of Braunlage and finally walk along the Sprakelbach until we reach the point of origin. That fits in face of the additional kilometres we walked our mood is below zero for a short while.

From the point of origin it is still seven kilometers to Hohegeiß and we already walked for 4,5 hours by now. We make another break and try to charge our batteries for the rest of the path and it works. At the latest when Christian sees his “twin towers” for the second time our high spirits are back. In the meantime the weather changed for good, only sunshine and a nice warm breath are surrounding us.

Fresh powder ahoi
After having passed the tavern Wolfsbachmühle for the second time it only takes another kilometre to reach our starting point. But this one is a ripsnorter because we have to climb the ski hill of Hohegeiß, that is another 100 meters difference in altitude on a very short distance. We mobilize our last energy ressources and arrive a the mountain village. Just a couple of minutes later we are back at our car and are looking back on a very long, challenging but beautiful hike.

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