Winter
by the lake

Winter at the Schliersee happens on two levels, and that is its real advantage. Down below, the village sits at 777 metres. Between October and March it is empty, the lakeside paths are clear, and it feels as if someone has turned the volume down.

Five kilometres further south and three hundred metres higher lies the Spitzingsee, at 1,084 metres. The village of the same name, at 1,090 metres, is the municipality’s centre for winter sports and mountain walking. Up there it is busy, people ski, and there is snow when there has long been none down below.

The ski bus runs between the two. With the Gästekarte, the guest card your hotel or host gives you when you stay overnight, the ride is free, and it takes about a quarter of an hour. In practice that means you can stay in the village, where it is quiet and warm, and still be on the slopes in the morning. You do not have to choose.

The Spitzingsee ski area is the nearest sizeable ski area to Munich and can be reached without a car on the ski bus. The lifts are run by the Alpenbahnen Spitzingsee, whose address is below. Current opening times, prices and piste conditions are on their site, not here: they change with the weather, and a page with out-of-date figures is worse than none.

Beyond the pistes, the area is well known for ski touring, climbing on skis with skins and skiing down off-piste. The Brecherspitz, 1,684 metres, is a popular objective. Until around 1997 a ski lift ran up its subsidiary summit, linked with the Freudenreich lift and the Firstalm lifts to the Spitzingsee ski area. It was finally dismantled in 2010. Since then you climb up yourself.

For ski touring, the rule is the same as everywhere in the Alps, only easier to forget here because Munich is so close: the avalanche bulletin is not a suggestion. The Bavarian Avalanche Warning Service is linked below, as is the German Alpine Club for the state of paths and huts.

Then there is cross-country skiing, winter walking and sledging. If you want a stop with some altitude: the German Alpine Club’s Bodenschneidhaus hut at the Rettenbäckalm, about three hundred metres below the summit of the Bodenschneid, is open all year.

In winter the 7.4 km shore path is the best walk in the area. It is flat, it is cleared, and it shows you the lake in a mood nobody sees in summer: hoarfrost on the branches, mist over the water, and towards midday the mountains in cold, very clear air.

Whether the lake freezes depends on the year. Historically it was covered in ice for a long time in spring, which, together with its sheltered position, is why it stopped turning over by itself and collapsed ecologically in the 1970s. Since 1982 a compressed-air pipe in both basins has mixed it every three to four days. If you step onto the ice, you do so at your own risk: the lake is never officially opened for skating, not by the municipality and not by anyone else. If you want to skate, go to the natural ice rink.

The village has the Vitalwelt, with an indoor pool and sauna, five minutes’ walk from the station. And in our house six rooms have a sauna of their own in the room. For the weeks between November and March, when it gets dark at four, that is the most useful thing a room can have.

October is the most beautiful month here, and one of the emptiest. Mist lies over the water in the morning and lifts as the morning goes on, the paths are dry, the inns have room, and the light comes in low over the lake.

November and early December are quiet. If you want a week to read, you will find it here. Over Christmas and New Year it gets busy, then quiet again.

February is Fasching, the Bavarian carnival. In our house the Weiberfasching, the women’s carnival day on the Thursday before Lent, is now a fixed date, in 2027 on 4 February and explicitly not just for women, and the hall of the farmers’ theatre next door is one of the places in the village where people still really celebrate.

March is Starkbierzeit, the strong beer season, and at the end of March the Markus Wasmeier Open-Air Museum opens for the year. There is one oddity that surprised even us: March is the month in which Schliersee is searched for online most often, and at the same time one of the emptiest in the village. If you are flexible, you get almost the whole valley to yourself.