The Zugspitze – Winter Fun in the Alps

The season there runs from November to April. In addition to the skiing opportunities on the glaciers, there's plenty of winter fun in the valleys. And off the beaten track, far from the hubbub on the pistes, hikers and ice climbers can have their own adventures in pristine natural surroundings, in Partnach Gorge, for example.

At the foot of the Zugspitze lies Garmisch-Partenkirchen, one of Bavaria's best-known holiday resorts. Many of the façades of its charming old houses are decorated with murals featuring religious or rustic motifs. The town's most famous resident was the composer Richard Strauss, who memorialized the area musically in his tone poem, An Alpine Symphony. His villa is now a museum. The steep precipices of the Zugspitze were long considered unclimbable.  Not until 1820 did a mountaineer, Joseph Naus, manage to reach its summit. Nowadays you can reach the summit in a mere ten minutes on the Eibsee Cable Car. The view from the plateau at the summit is overwhelming. The panorama stretches over the Bavarian Alps and the mountains of Austria and Switzerland all the way to Italy.