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BookReview | Of course with public transport! The best ski tours, ski trips & ski safaris from Munich

[Natürlich mit Öffis! Die besten Skitouren, Reibn & Skisafaris ab München] A wide range of suggestions for your first ski tour without traffic jams

by Patrick Wehowsky 03/30/2023
The Munich night club institution 'Harry Klein' and a book presentation on ski touring using public transport. Two things that don't seem to go together at first glance, but on closer inspection harmonise perfectly and complement each other. The Harry Klein was certainly packed and gave the impression that the authors had struck a chord with the times.

Ski touring on public transport is not the biggest trend in the ski touring boom of recent years, to put it mildly. Perhaps the interest has much more to do with the narrative and photographic skills of the authors.  

Anyone who follows the usual ski touring groups on Facebook will have noticed the reports by Michael Vitzthum and his co-authors, which are always worth reading. Thanks to his tongue-in-cheek writing and unique visual language, Vitzthum has achieved a high recognition value and a steadily growing readership and popularity.

New perspectives and unusual angles are what give Vitzthum's pictures their high recognition value. You could say that Vitzthum's style of photography performatively illustrates the aim of the book, which he wrote with his three co-authors.

Feiner, Vitzthum and Schmid² want to break out of the eternal contradiction of ski touring enthusiasm on the one hand and the associated consumption of resources and land on the other. Climate and environmental protection are a central motive, but by no means the only one. The use of public transport opens up completely new combination possibilities for ski safaris or ski touring - it is a great merit of the book to emphasise this.

Broadening perspectives and adventures with and by public transport instead of paying homage to the idol of motorised private transport. Pleasantly enough, they do this without pointing a finger, but instead make you want to try it out for yourself with every tour description.

The book's target audience is first and foremost Munich's urban ski touring clientele, and quite deliberately so. After all, it is not only on ski touring routes that directing streams of visitors is a desirable goal. The "local mountains", which are easily accessible from Munich, and the neighbouring communities are heavily frequented in both summer and winter - so much so that complaints about the "city dwellers" are part of the standard repertoire of the rural population in both summer and winter.

Presentation of the tours

The 35 tour suggestions include some of Munich's local mountains such as the Wank, the Hirschberg, the Kampenwand and the Geigelstein, as well as a clear focus on the hotspots of Schliersee, Tegernsee and Spitzingsee. This is quite consistent, because anyone who has ever set off too late in this direction from Munich on a winter weekend has bitten the steering wheel a few times in anger and despair, even with an otherwise stoic behavioural ideal.

The tour destinations in the guide are usually already familiar to experienced tourers, but there are always worthwhile variations - keyword new perspectives - that are only possible by using public transport. For example, the "Cool-Loch Safari" (Tour 16), which takes you from Hochzirl to Gießenbach.

There are also well-known classic routes that only come into account when public transport is used. A prime example of this is the popular Grünstein bypass in the Wetterstein, which would otherwise require several cars and leads from Munich through the bottleneck of Garmisch.

The tour descriptions are easy to follow and the pictures are expressive. I particularly like the one-page summary, which includes not only altitude metres, distance and slope directions, but also aspects such as requirements, orientation and nature conservation. Of course, each tour also includes at least one refreshment stop, including opening times, to make the most of any waiting time for the next bus or train.

Almost more valuable than their tour tips are the instructive description of their own approach to planning a tour, including a variety of apps and ticket tips, as well as a specially created network map that stretches from Munich to the main ridge and gives an idea of the many possibilities. With all these aspects, it is no wonder that the book was awarded the DAV seal of approval "Naturally on Tour".

With this in mind: pick up your map, open the apps and try them out.

Photo gallery

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