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Saxon Switzerland (Sächsische Schweiz) Hike

September 17-19, 2009

Author: Francesco Grilli

Participants: Tianshu Li and Francesco Grilli

Slideshow: click here.    National Park Website: click here (English).    Map: click here.

Regional Hiking Guide: click here (in German).

I had a conference in Dresden, Germany, so Tianshu and I took this opportunity to go hiking in the Saxon Switzerland (Sächsische Schweiz in German). The region is characterized by numerous huge sandstone rock formations and it is a big climbing site. The are some very interesting climbing rules here. I quote from SummitPost: "There are restrictions on climbing equipment. No metal protection other than the rings already present may be used. The permanent rings are often very far apart. If intermediate protection is desired, creating sling knots, threading sling through holes in the rock (Sanduhr) or looping a sling around rocks is allowed. Given that the rock is so soft, I don't think any of this would really hold. As a family friend explained to me once - if you fall, then you overestimated your abilities and you shouldn't have been there in the first place! Chalk or any other chemical is forbidden."

 

Anyway, given the limited time available, we didn't bring any climbing gear with us, and we just hiked.

The first day we hiked from Bad Schandau to Lichtenhainer Wasserfall, whick turned out to be quite long (~6 hrs). We didn't find good weather, but it didn't rain and the low clouds and the fog added some sense of mystery to the landscape. We traversed the rock complex of Schrammsteine and, partially, Affensteine. The trail is very nice, meandering in small canyons, under little caves, and climbing up to the rock ridges. In many points metal ladders, metal holds and carved steps facilitate the trail.

The second day we went to Rathen to climb to Bastei, which offers great views of the Elbe valley. The trail climbing up from the north side is very nice. Unfortunately, since the top can be accessed by road, the Bastei itself is very packed with noisy tourists, who pay a fee of few Euros to access some bridges connecting the rocks. We didn't want to fall in this tourist trap (even because we had enough bridges the day before) and we discended directly back to Rathen. From there we hiked to Lilienstein, which reminded us of New Mexico's mesas. Lilienstaein is also very popular, although less then Bastei, and has a restaurant on the top.

The third day we hiked to a natural arch in the Czech Republic, which can be accessed by simply crossing the river in Schöna. Despite the beauty of the arch, which is quite large, this hike was quite disappointing: a good part of it is on paved road, quite busy with cars; then, it is extremely crowded with toursists; but the worst thing is that, despite what one may see in some pictures, there arch is surrounded by signs of the human "civilization" (?). Restaurants, paved road, noise...and they ask you for 3 Euros (the price of a decent meal in the nearby village) to get closer to the arch: once again, "no, thank you!"

Overall, I think that the region is very nice and deserves a second visit to discover the less known places and to try the climbing.
 


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