Mittenwald, Germany
We reached Mittenwald shortly before 3 pm and walked from the station to Alpenhotel Rieger. After checking in, we went directly into the old town and discovered that we had arrived during the Bozner Markt.
Mittenwald was the second half of our Bavaria trip, after three days around Königssee and Ramsau. It sits in Upper Bavaria close to the Austrian border, between the Karwendel and Wetterstein mountains.
Painted façades lined the old town streets, with mountains appearing between buildings and at the ends of roads.
Our trip at a glance
- When: August
- Base: Mittenwald, at Alpenhotel Rieger
- Getting around: On foot. We did not use a local bus.
- Reached from town: Mittenwald old town, Bozner Markt, Ederkanzel, Leutasch Gorge, Lautersee, Ferchensee and Laintal
Arriving in Mittenwald
We stayed at Alpenhotel Rieger, less than a ten-minute walk from Mittenwald station and around five minutes from the old town.
The hotel had breakfast, afternoon Hi-Tea and a balcony with mountain views, but location was the biggest advantage for us. We could finish a hike, rest for a while and walk back into town without thinking about buses or connections.
Over the next few days, we did not use local transport at all.
Day 1: Mittenwald Old Town and the Bozner Markt
Walking around Mittenwald
Our first hours in Mittenwald were mostly spent wandering. We walked through Obermarkt, stopped near St. Peter und Paul, looked at the painted houses and browsed a few shops.
One of the details I noticed most was the Lüftlmalerei.
Some façades had religious scenes or elaborate painted frames around the windows, while others showed everyday life, mountains or local traditions. One building we passed had a large mural covering most of the upper wall, with a lake, mountains and figures painted across the façade.
The paintings are not confined to one showcase street. We found them on larger buildings, quieter side roads and around Obermarkt.
Mittenwald has been known for violin making since Matthias Klotz began working here in the late seventeenth century. We passed the Geigenbaumuseum and the large wooden violin sculpture while exploring the old town.
Mountains appeared behind rooftops, between buildings and beyond the pedestrian streets.
St. Peter und Paul
St. Peter und Paul is difficult to miss.
Its tall painted tower rises directly above the centre, decorated in the same colourful style seen on many of Mittenwald's buildings. We passed it several times simply because so many streets around the old town seemed to lead back towards it.
We accidentally arrived during the Bozner Markt
We had not planned our trip around the Bozner Markt, so discovering that it was happening while we were there came as a surprise.
The festival commemorates the market transferred from Bozen to Mittenwald in 1487. We knew none of this when we booked and arrived to find Obermarkt filled with wooden stalls, musicians and residents in period clothing. The 2026 edition ran from 1 to 9 August.
One group we stopped to watch was playing violin, cello and guitar directly in the street. They performed beside one of the buildings while people gathered around them.
Music kept appearing in different parts of town. Sometimes we heard it before we saw where it was coming from. Elsewhere, performers wandered through the streets, gathering an audience as they went.
We also saw performers on stilts making their way through the crowd.
We bought champignons with dip from one of the stalls and ate them while watching the people and performers move through the streets.
After a while, the busy festival area started to feel overwhelming. We stepped away from the busiest streets and continued exploring quieter parts of Mittenwald.
The next morning, we left the old town for Leutasch Gorge. The day did not go according to plan.
Day 2: A wrong turn to Ederkanzel and the Leutasch Gorge
We started walking from Römerweg, near the edge of Mittenwald, where the yellow hiking signs pointed towards Ederkanzel, Lautersee and Ferchensee.
Initially, we were relying on digital maps to guide us towards the gorge, but the route was not clear enough at this point and we ended up following a paved road instead of the hiking path.
It did not take long to realise something was wrong. Cars were passing us, cyclists were using the same road, and it clearly did not look like the trail we had intended to follow.
We retraced our steps, continued uphill, and when the small chapel appeared on our right, we took the trail on the left.
This was where we stopped checking the digital map and followed the much clearer yellow signs.
One of them pointed towards Ederkanzel, about an hour away.
We had already considered visiting Ederkanzel, so we changed the order of the day - climb there first, then descend towards Leutasch Gorge afterwards.
That small navigation mistake ended up giving us a much better route than the one we had originally planned.
Climbing to Ederkanzel
Once we left the road, the forest trail climbed steadily, with comfortable footing throughout. The path was also clearly marked. After finding the correct route, the signs were easy enough to follow that we hardly needed to check AllTrails.
We eventually reached Ederkanzel.
The restaurant sits in an unusual position right on the German-Austrian border.
We already knew that it was known for views towards Austria. What we did not know was that the border itself passes through the property.
Lunch on the German-Austrian border
We only understood exactly how unusual the location was after talking to one of the people working there.
He was incredibly friendly and explained exactly where the border ran. There is an old boundary stone inside the restaurant, but the unusual part is that the building itself stands in Bavaria while the terrace is on Austrian soil. So when we sat outside for lunch, we were quite literally eating in Austria after hiking up from Germany.
We sat outside with the Austrian mountains in front of us, ordered Hacker-Pschorr beer and a Käseteller, and stayed longer than we originally planned.
From Ederkanzel, we finally turned towards what had originally been the main destination of the day - Leutasch Gorge.
Descending towards the Leutasch Gorge
For part of the descent, we were hiking almost directly along the Germany-Austria border.
When we checked our location on the map, the border line was running close to our position, with Germany on one side and Austria on the other.
There was nothing on the trail itself that made this obvious. Without looking at the map, we probably would not have known exactly when we were moving between the two countries.
As we approached Leutasch Gorge, the trail changed completely.
The forest path began giving way to metal walkways, bridges and platforms built into the rock walls.
Turquoise water ran far below the walkways. I kept stopping to look down through the metal grating and at the sections fixed directly to the rock.
One of those crossings was the Höllbrücke, or Hell Bridge. My notes from that day reduced it to three words: "walked over Hell".
The substantial barriers made the higher bridges feel secure, and I spent much of the crossing looking down into the gorge.
At the Panorama Bridge, I could see the turquoise water far below us.
We had enough room to stop for photographs without blocking other walkers.
Inside the Geisterklamm
Short signs and quizzes told stories about the gorge along the route. They were clearly aimed at children, and we still stopped to read several.
We completed the full Geisterklamm loop.
Not a bad result for starting the day on the wrong road.
Back at the hotel, we had Hi-Tea and rested after the hike. When we went out for dinner at around 9 pm, the restaurants we tried had already stopped taking orders and the town was beginning to close for the night.
Day 3: Lautersee, Ferchensee and the walk back through Laintal
For our last full day in Mittenwald, we followed a loop connecting Lautersee and Ferchensee, before returning to town through Laintal.
The AllTrails loop we followed is listed at around 8.7 km with roughly 264 metres of elevation gain and an estimated walking time of 2.5 to 3 hours. Our day took considerably longer because we stopped at Ferchensee for more than an hour to swim.
Once again, we started directly from Mittenwald and followed the yellow hiking signs out of town.
Seeing Lautersee on the way to Ferchensee
Our first proper view of Lautersee came from the trail above the shoreline.
As the trail gained height, the trees opened and we could look down towards the lake. Green meadows filled the foreground, the water sat below us, and the mountains stretched across the background.
This was one of my favourite views of Lautersee because we could see so much of its setting at once.
We did not stop there for long at this stage. Ferchensee was still ahead, so we continued along the trail through alternating sections of forest and open ground.
Ferchensee
Ferchensee was the farthest point of our loop and the place where the day slowed down.
Forest surrounds much of the lake, while pale rocky peaks rise beyond the trees. It was a hot August afternoon, which made the water difficult to resist.
There were plenty of people swimming when we arrived, although some were already beginning to pack up and leave for the day.
We had brought swimming clothes, so we went in.
The water was cold, but after walking in the heat it felt refreshing. We stayed for around an hour to an hour and a half, swimming and sitting beside the lake.
Ferchensee ended up being my favourite of the two lakes.
We had already spent several days around Alpine lakes on this trip, but most of those experiences had been from a boat, a trail or the shoreline. At Ferchensee, we were actually in the water looking towards the mountains.
Eventually, we dried off and continued the loop back towards Lautersee.
Back towards Lautersee
The return route brought us back to Lautersee from another direction, this time close to the shore. Earlier we had looked down on the lake from the trail; now we walked beside it before continuing through the meadows towards Maria Königin Kapelle.
Through the meadows to Maria Königin Kapelle
The scenery opened up again once we moved away from the lake.
Forest gave way to grassy meadows, wooden fences and small buildings, with mountains still visible beyond them.
Soon we reached Maria Königin Kapelle, a small white chapel standing on its own above the meadow.
Its setting was what caught my attention most. The chapel itself is small, but with open grass around it and the mountain wall behind, it stands out immediately from the trail.
From here, the route began descending towards Laintal.
Along the way, we passed several small wooden wayside crosses before the meadows disappeared and the surroundings became more enclosed by trees and rock.
The final stretch through Laintal
As we entered Laintal, the trail narrowed and became more shaded. We were now walking between forest and rock, with the sound of running water nearby.
[PHOTO: Narrow forest and gorge path]
One of the main points along this section is Lainbach waterfall.
There was no separate detour required. The waterfall appeared naturally along the route, dropping through a rocky section surrounded by trees before the trail continued downhill.
The path around the waterfall became narrower and more constructed in places as it followed the gorge.
Further along, we reached the Mariengrotte, a small Marian shrine set directly into the rock.
Eventually, the gorge began to open and the trail gradually led us back towards town.
Our last evening in Mittenwald
By the time we finished the hike, we were extremely hungry and went straight to an Indian restaurant for dinner.
Afterwards, we took one last walk through Mittenwald. It was the final night of the Bozner Markt, but most of the day-trippers had already left and the streets felt calmer than they had during the day.
We stopped for one final performance by a man singing in the old town. We stood there listening for a while before walking back to the hotel.
Three days in Mittenwald
The wrong turn to Ederkanzel became my favourite part of our stay. We had set out for Leutasch Gorge and ended up eating lunch in Austria before reaching it. The three words I wrote in my notes that day still make me smile: "walked over Hell".
