Hello everyone,
So I wanted to share my first solo hiking experience that had that December and of course that happened after a long period of depression and limited amount of money. Thankfully every time those periods gave an end and I decided to celebrate this with a long hike and due to tue fact that no of my friends was available, the only option for me was to go solo.
After some research I came to the conclusion that I am more inclined to go to Germany's Black Forest or Schwarzwald as the locals call it so I booked train tickets and some hostels and I was waiting for my vacations to start!
So I arrived at Freiburg and after a brief exploration within the city, I decided to rest for the next day would be exhausting. I woke up the next morning, ate as much food as I could, filled my thermos with hot water and some tea leaves and I started walking towards Hinterzarten.
The first part was a bit boring for my taste as I had to hike through meadows and villages but that was a good opportunity to test my stamina as I had not hiked for some years and now my backpack was around 10kg which is not that much but i had to walk for about 26km. At some point after Falkensteig finally I started ascending and entered a forested area! There is not much that I can tell about this day as the trail was graphic and at some point I made it to Hinterzarten where I ate like a hippo 😀
Next day I would summit mount Feldberg. It's just as high as 1500 meters which is nothing special but doing this solo stressed me a bit but that was tye exciting kind of stress! There was way more snow than I expected but nothing that i could not manage to overcome. At that point I realized that my left boot is injuring my leg above the heel and thankfully that problem was resolved by just tying my shoelaces lower. At the summit of Feldberg I enjoyed some tea, I ate some snacks and after some time I descended to the lake Feldsee and I took a very slippery frozen path with many feld pines around. After 20 minutes I reached the lake which was completely frozen at that time and I stayed there fir a bit to enjoy the view and take some pics. Anyway after the lake I started heading to Hirschen where was my next hostel to stay.
Next day I started hiking to Todtnau. Everything was awesome. At that time the temperature was -2° Celcius and the clouds seemed to flow low. After Todtnau I visited the local waterfall which was an amazing view. As always after some pics I pushed forward and after passing some villages I ascened to a mount that I think is called Trubelsmattkopf. It started snowing there and the absence of sound made my thing a bit like a fairy tail but also a bit awkward as my brain started playing ticks on me and every faint sound demanded my full focus for an instant. Anyway at tye time I started descending I felt dizzy and also I felt like someone is choking me. Everything was covered in snow and I could not relax anywhere so I decided to slowing push forward and I hoped that I will start feeling better. But the dizzyness did nit stop and I had a small panic attack which thankfully I managed to overcome. I mean I could feel some impulses on making shortcuts leaving the trail so I can reach the next village faster but thankfully I did not do that! Anyway things when good and I managed to reach Stauffen where once again I ate like a hippo!
Next day I had to reach Freiburg again but the scene was again full of meadows and villages so at some point I decided to take the bus and rest.
As I saw that my action cam started overwriting my recordings of the first day, and as I had a free spare day I decided to go to one last hike from Falkensteig to Hinterzarten and to Titisee and then I took the train back to Freiburg.
After this I was a bit dehydrated malnourished, as I neglected the snacks and constant water drinking, I was low on sugar and electrolytes and I had that loss of balance thing when I was laying down on a bed or even change sides while on a bed. But anyway I intend to do a mething similar again and of course with better food/water consumption. Really I should have tried solo hiking earlier.
by Christopher_nunchaku