The arrival of alpinism
Parallel to, and intertwined with the national histories of Germany, Austria and Italy is the history of alpinism, walking and the Alpine Clubs.
The attraction of the Alps to mountaineers can be traced back to the late 18th century and is described in a wonderful book The Playground of Europe by Sir Leslie Stephen. As well as being father to Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, Stephen was one of the godfathers of British alpinism and his book, along with Edward Whymper’s Scrambles Amongst the Alps is one of the classics of the genre. As well as describing great adventures it puts the ‘discovery’ of the Alps in the context of a wider search for a simpler but more heroic lifestyle that was going on throughout Europe, known as ‘Romanticism’.
Stephen, Whymper and the British led the ‘golden age’ of climbing in the Alps, the time when, in the 1850s and 1860s, hundreds of peaks where ‘conquered’ for the first time. In Britain climbing and hiking was an elite activity but not so in Germany where the Romantic ideal of the mountains captured the imagination of the new middle class. The British Alpine Club was modelled on an English gentleman’s club with a small select membership but the German equivalent grew rapidly into the world’s largest mass membership sporting organisation. The new membership wanted access to the mountains and the huge infrastructure of mountain huts used today was largely built in the 30 years before the First World War (the names often reflect the local clubs that paid for them – such as the Berliner Hütte).
The German Alpine Club recruited members from the wider German-speaking world (including Austria), and hiking and climbing in the Alps was seen as a ‘German’ activity and closely associated with German nationalism. By the late 19th century this nationalism shamefully became associated with anti-semitism and a number of city and regional associations adopted an ‘Aryan Paragraph’ excluding non-Christian members.
The German Alpine Club, liked most civilian bodies, rallied round the flag at the outbreak of the World War I but the importance of the alpine front against Italy from 1915 gave alpinists a particular significance. Although a small proportion of the huge membership engaged in the fighting the involvement of Alpine Club members became the stuff of legend, reported and repeated through the club journals.
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the defeat of Germany was a particular blow to the heroes of the alpine front and one that many refused to accept. By the early 1920s the Alpine Club had become a battleground as the emerging Nazi party fought more moderate and left-leaning alpinists for its control. By 1924 Jews were effectively excluded from the Club and its huts.
By the 1930s, the German Alpine Club, like most sporting associations, had been absorbed into the Nazi totalitarian state. Alpinism, however, had a particular cultural status and mountaineers, willing to risk all for their sport and country, were seen as models for the new state. As a result, after the war Deutscher Alpenverein (the name dates back to 1938) was deemed a Nazi organisation by the Allies in 1945 and dissolved.
In the early 1950s, separate German (Deutscher Alpenverein) and Austrian (Oesterreichischer Alpenverien) Alpine Clubs were allowed to re-establish and together they continue to maintain and develop the incredible walking infrastructure of Austrian Alps. This includes not only the huts but also the footpaths, fixed ropes and waymarks. We wouldn’t be able to walk from Munich to Venice without them.
The invention of a mountain pilgrimage
The Traumpfad was the idea of a German man, Ludwig Grassler, who, after several false starts, walked it for first time 1974. His guide was first published 1977. An Alpinist himself, he was careful to construct a route that was both direct and spectacular. He succeeded and, like Wainwright’s famous ‘coast-to-coast’ (across northern England), one man’s vision has captured many thousands of imaginations.
Most of Ludwig’s journey follows existing routes, some of which (like the Alta Via 1 and 2 across the Dolomites) are famous in their own right. Although there is no designated ‘Munich to Venice’ footpath – no specific set of waymarks signposting the route – it is easy to follow and, because it’s more popular than many designated walks, it is well supported by locals. The route continues to evolve with slight differences in the different guidebooks and changes to reflect new circumstances. When accommodation closes, or a landslip destroys a section of the route, or a new footpath is opened, then the route responds.
The route
There is more to the Traumpfad than a north–south traverse of the Alps but the mountains cannot help but dominate the experience.
It takes only two and a half days’ walk alongside the River Isar to get from Munich to the mountains. You are then in the mountains for at least 20 consecutive days (depending on the choices you make about how to stage your journey). When you emerge, you follow the River Piave, over five days of flat walking, to get to Venice.
The Alps are a young and dynamic mountain range sitting right in the middle of Europe. They are the product of Africa’s land mass thrusting northwards. A huge, multi-layered ripple in Europe’s tectonic plate has been driven skywards where, high and exposed, the elements wreak havoc and erosion is rapid, violent and fierce. The youngest, softest layers suffer the most and vast quantities of debris are transported out of the Alps by rivers and glaciers only to be returned as Africa continues to move north. The remnants of these younger layers, carved into mountains, are found on the northern and southern sides of the Alps with the toughest oldest rock revealed in the exposed core in the middle.
Geisler Púez and the Forcella Roa (Stage 16)
Despite looking quite different to one another the mighty Karwendel on the northern side of the core and the Dolomites to the south are closely related. Both are of similar age, formed in similar circumstances, and both are composed of types of limestone. The lagoons where the Dolomites were formed, however, produced a higher proportion of magnesium and that gave these mountains their distinct shape and colour.
The limestone on top of the core of the Alps, running east–west, has long been stripped away and older layers exposed. This is what you see when you cross the Tux and Zillertal Alps, where instead of limestone the mountains consist of much older metamorphic gneiss, slate and granite.
Although the age of the rocks on view is measured in tens of millions of years the process that turned them into mountains is more recent. This is a landscape where for most of the year the predominant colour is white, and which only a few thousand years ago was almost totally covered by an ice cap. Glaciers still cut their way into mountainsides today. Even with global warming the process that formed today’s mountains (only the highest of which would have protruded through the ice cap) is still going on.
Pelmo – the most beautiful mountain in the Dolomites? (Stage 22)
Identifying the various mountains is one of the challenges and joys of the Traumpfad. Some of mountains ‘visited’ have an iconic status that renders them instantly recognisable (such as Marmolada, the highest mountain in the Dolomites, or Pelmo, the most beautiful), but others are important in the wider pantheon of Alpine peaks (for example Bikkarspitz, the highest mountain in the Karwendel, the Hochfeiler, the biggest in the Zillertal, and Civetta the famous west wall of which is the highest of the last mountain stage of the route). Tentatively naming a mountain approached from the north, confirming its designation as it gets closer and saying goodbye to it from the south is a process that can extend over many days.
The Alpine seasons
The position of the Alps in the middle of