Our final full day and we've ended on a high (no pun intended!).We started our walk at Laubau, a short bus journey out of Rhupolding and home to the Wood Cutters Museum we had visited earlier in our holiday.
From there we followed the path up (and up) to Rauschberg - which I've mentioned previously is the local highest peak. There are many other peaks we haven't done and we'll save those for next time as WE WILL BE BACK!
We have woken up to Rauschberg every day - it has been an imposing sight at 1671m/5482ft. Rhupolding sits at 660m/2165ft above sea level so we are already pretty high up. The path up was a mixture of forest road and woodland path, slippy in parts due to the clay soil.
On the way up we passed several other walkers and a group of nordic walkers who then passed us and remained ahead of us for the rest of the climb - in fact we never saw them again so they must have just headed back down the other side (or taken the cable car!).
When we reached the cable car station (27m/88ft below the actual peak) there were a fair number of tourists dressed in their nice clean walking gear who had clearly cheated and taken the easy way up - you could tell by the footwear! There were some views down to Rhupolding but we didn't get the famed 360 degree views due to the low cloud.
We carried on for the last 88ft to the peak which was a bit of an anti-climax. We had no views whatsoever but there was no way we were going to walk this far and not reach the actual summit.
Back down at the cable car station we had some lunch in the restaurant - coffee and a local speciality called Kaiserschmarn which is a pancake filled with fruit and served with apple sauce (it was the only thing we could decipher from the menu!). The climb to the peak was 5.6miles/2hrs 39min.
It was now time for the walk down, which was a different route to that we took up as this one took us to Rhupolding. The path down was very steep in parts and cut through Rauschberg and Streicher (1594m/5229ft) with views over to a much larger, stonier range of mountains including the impressive Sonntagshorn (1961m/6433ft).
The path was a bit punishing on the legs and feet but we got some great views we hadn't appreciated climbing up and we had a good view of Rhupolding in the valley - we could also see Lake Chiemsee in the distance. The path brought us out at a caravan site and we joined the path next to the River Traun which took us back into Rhupolding - this leg of the walk being 7.5miles/2hrs 25mins.
We arrived back to the Hotel very tired and in need of a hot bath to ease our tired feet. The sun is shining and it's due to be lovely again tomorrow - we'll be happy to get home but we will miss the relaxation of Rhupolding (relaxation being a strange word to use I suppose as we have been out walking practically every day!).
Total climb - 13.1 miles/5hrs
