The Karwendel circus??? Yes indeed, sometimes it is a circus. The Karwendel in a very beautifull area and ofcourse a nature reserve. On the other hand it’s well known name is exploited in several ways, hardly avoidable by hikers. Let me name a few:
The struggle of being the must horable place is a tie between Seefeld and the Eng (or grosser Ahornboden). As the Eng is almost in the centre of the area it wins.
In the Eng there are many, many cars and busloads of people
driven with big busses into the Karwendel. And the
only thing they can do there is spend there money on the ‘local’ products.
Often you also see people on their way towards the Falkenhutte
or Lamsenjoch hutte,
without descent equipment (sneakers, no water, no raincoats etc), giving up
halfway of being passed by the hikers with huge backpacks. You know, in
As a hiker you have to pass the Eng, there is no alternative road above it. It
is convenient to have a drink/water-refill and a ‘strudel’ and then go on. Note
that the local people in the Eng can be particularly rude, certainly in Gasthof Eng, to people from which they will not profit.
Seefeld is a skiing resort that managed for some reason to attract people in summer. There are several lifts and a cable railway. What joy it is to walk between those I can’t understand but people go there. As Seefeld is on the edge of the Karwendel and actually not really part of it, it can be avoided by hikers easily.
Innsbruck/Seegrube: comparable with Seefeld, although the skiing area is a bit smaller. Again it is on the edge of it.
Scharnitz. No that’s actually not honest. Scharnitz is a friendly small place but it promotes itself as gateway to the Karwendel and is also the point where taxi’s are allowed to enter the Karwendel. On the main roads to the Karwendelhaus, Halleranger alm/haus or Mosalm you can encounter taxi’s. There are some limitations however. As far as I know a taxi may drive up to the Karwendelhaus once a day and not completely to the Halleranger alm/haus (last 600mtr up you must walk). Also Scharnitz exploits the source of the river Isar, which is a major discussion with the community Absam, that claims it’s on their ground. So you will find the source of the Isar marked in the “hinter-au” valley and near the Hallerangerhaus.
People in the mountains. As mentioned earlier, these easy accesses into the Karwendel by public transport can bring weird sights. People with backpacks and heavy shoes pass (it is rarely reversed) people on sneakers (or even common shoes) and no backpacks on tracks that demand decent equipment. I have encountered people going uphill with no equipment who were fully unware that the weather that seemed fine was very likely to turn into thunderstorms (and it did an hour later). I actually aided in rescuing such people once. It is quit bizarre that as long as it brings money, local people don’t seem to care a lot what people do and which risks they take.
The creation of mountain bike routes. This means more people in the nature reserve. There are currently two main tracks, one over the main east-west Karwendel route (Karwendelhaus, Falkenhoute, Lamsjoch hutte) which is however not used that much as the roads are not really made for easy biking, and a round-trip from Mittenwald, via the Karwendelhaus and Hinterriss.
Locals: Yes, also the locals ofcourse are part of the circus, as already introduced above. It is odd how the behaviour of local people in the tourist industry changes with the chance of making money out of you. As long as you behave as the big masses they are friendly and willing to help. At the moment it requires some effort or change of plans from their side, they can become pretty rude as a cabin keeper mentioned when we stayed longer in the morning due to bad weather and thus interfered a bit with normal cleaning activities: ‘I can’t throw you out’. Message received? Also I heard some pretty crual jokes about tourists from locals to which I had a more friendly relation, build up in time. In general they however do have more respect for people that take long high-alpine hikes, but not in the areas that really fous on mass-tourism. When I want to spend the night in a hotel/gasthaus I often leave the backpack outside when going in to ask, gives a better chance.
The definition of Nature area: Looking at the map it is
clear that not the people had to adjust to the nature reserve but quit the oposite. All area’s that had some commericial
interrest in the Karwendel
have been conveneantly kept out of the nature reserve.
Best exemple you see at the Eng-alm.
Now you have to be aware that some of these ‘rights’ are very old and not
easily taken away. Alms were there long before it became a reserve. But the
extension of these due to tourism is done at the expense of the reseverve and people with commercial interest are getting
more and more sneaky in calling an extension a
modernization. Most horrible example is the total destruction of the source of
the Isar river, which runs
through
Now how bad is this all? The Karwendel is large: 30x40Km, and compared to other nature reserves like one familiar to me, Hoge Veluwe in the Netherlands, the exploitation is not that bad. On the other hand, the nature in mountains is much more sensitive. Most of exploitation takes place on mountain roads that were already there, on the higher and more difficult trails there are much fewer people. But each time the commercialization takes a little step further. There is however growing concern about where this will stop. Groups like “www.jetzt-werds-eng.de” warn for the continous further exploitation.