You’re probably one of the many people in this world that has wondered exactly how to get to the Meilerhütte. Or not. In any case, I’m going to relate a little bit of my experience from the hike there and back (there being the Meilerhütte, back being my car). I’m not sure that I can tell you anything useful, except that I decided that King Ludwig II was probably gay, and hiking through the mountains in the fog is probably a lot more fun than you think.

The Meilerhütte is located near the peak called Dreitorspitze on the border of Austria and southern Germany. The hütte is at about 2366 meters in elevation [7762 feet] and isn’t an extremely easy hike, but isn’t that hard either. I started near a parking lot at a castle called Elmau, something like 15km away (is my guess).

You’ll have to climb up over a kilometer, though, so if you’re not in shape (like me), you’ll suffer for days later. You can do the hike in a single day (up and back), depending on where you start from – but I don’t think it would be nearly as relaxing as taking your time and stopping at the midpoint along the way for a bit of food and drink (at the Schachen Hütte). You can also take a look at Ludwig’s hunting lodge.

And one hell of a place he picked for a “hunting lodge”! The view is spectacular. I learned a little bit about him before doing the hike, and it turns out that he was – in my opinion – a rather strange fellow. That doesn’t, of course, support my claim that he was gay. I do think that his castle creations (the Disney castle, Neuschwanstein, for example) say something about his interests in beautiful things, and a little bit about his eccentric personality. In any case, he built a couple of other beautiful castles that I have yet to see.

He may just have been smarter that history lets on, in a way. He was engaged to be married for a while, but broke it off suddenly, and then never mentioned it again. Maybe he just realized something about women that the rest of us take years to figure out.

I liked his story, though. And its a shame, too, that he was basically framed by the government and his own cabinet . Get this: a bunch of doctors (who had never met him) decided to write up a paper saying that he was suffering from mental illness so bad that he couldn’t rule anymore. Neat. Somehow those doctors figured that out, and the people that worked closest to him couldn’t. Doctors must have been pretty damn good back in those days, that’s all I can say.

Not only that, they had him taken from Neuschwanstein in a rather tricky way (a bunch of people grabbed him and carried him off, WWF style) to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. Which wasn’t very much longer after that. He (or someone else) decided he should be dead while taking a walk one day with one of his pretty damn good doctors. Someone also decided that his doctor should be dead too – they were both found floating in some water nearby later on, but they weren’t swimming.

Funny, too, how much crap the papers were printing then about the “crazy” king in order to turn the opinion of the people against him, which later proved to be completely untrue. It’s not so much different than today, except that now we have more channels and faster internet.

So anyway, on the way to the Meilerhütte you won’t read anything about King Ludwig II, but you’ll get to see lots of typical Alps things. Like the Alpen Salamander (I don’t know what it’s really called, but something like that in German). Its a funny looking black thing with legs and arms. Looks slimy, so I didn’t touch it. Look at the photo below.

And his hunting lodge. I didn’t actually go in (there is a schedule of times, and I wasn’t patient enough to wait) but its pretty impressive, especially considering its location. From There you can make out the Meilerhütte far above, about 1 ½ hours of hiking (take a look at the photo below of the lodge)

Walking sticks. They are great. I never knew how helpful those things could be before this hike.

People here have been going through this exercise fad for the last few years called “Nordic Walking” – I’m not sure what’s Nordic about it, but I always thought people looked sorta silly walking around at a fast pace with what looks like ski poles – except there isn’t any snow, and sometimes no hills. Just walking, with these sticks swinging around.

Now, I at least realize the benefits of using some type of walking sticks/ crutches/ whatever when you’re climbing up and down on moderately steep trails. Bringing a pair along made my day! As the fog rolled in on the trip up, they were especially handy – fog seems to make your directions get a little screwy sometimes.