In order to escape the heat of the summer in Germany, this hike was another 4:30 am challenge. Which was no problem, as we have at the moment some kind of animal in the surrounding of our house, that is barking all night. I am still not sure if some neighbor bought a pup or if it is some kind of unassignable bird. Nether the less the nights at the moment are hot and humid and the noises do not help either.
This hike lead us one more time to Palatinate. To the Wasgau-Felsenweg. The hike can be started in Lindelbrunn and is following the red colored W sign. The description of the hike been, 21 kilometers with 620 meter high difference. Taking around 6:45 hours and is a difficult tour. Descriptions like that always make me suspicious. As we never take the given time. This hike took us 5:30 hours, including a 30 minutes breakfast at a lookout point.
I am actually curious how descriptions for hikes like time, category are coming together. In Germany, I often have the feeling the categories give are often once higher than it should be and the given time is 1 or 1 1/2 hours too long. It is interesting, as trails in Norway or the Pyrenees in France/Spain been in categories that I would mostly have rated higher.
But let me come back to this hike. The hike starts on a forest road crossing over grasslands, which was nice but not really spectacular. Around 3 kilometers in the hike the actual smaller path leading to rock formations and view points start. From Oberschlettenbach the hike continue towards the rock formation Haselstein. The Haselstein is a free-standing rock tower, which is used as a breeding ground for falcons and eagle owls. Further the trail includes the Löffelsberg, the Buhlstein and the Buhlsteinpfeiler.
Around 14 kilometers in the hike we took a detour into the Holzschuhpfad. Which is a 24 kilometer, 940 meter altitude hike that is crossing the Wasgau-Felsenweg and from our point of view had way more nice small trails leading to nice rock gates. But this tour has to wait for another day or most likely until fall. As the summer is just getting hotter by the day. Even with starting this tour at 6 am, around 10 am it was already too hot for my taste to continue.
