Wank ski tour

After an unusually long drive due to first searching for an open gas station in Weiden and after that succumbing to tiredness two times on the side of the road between Munich and Garmisch i finally rolled into Garmisch and fell asleep until 11. I woke up when my mom arrived back at the guest house and took a quick shower before we loaded out skis, skins and the rest of our backcountry gear into our backpacks and headed for the car for the short drive from Partenkirchen to the old Wank bahn parking lot.
We arrived in the parking lot quickly made a lunch and started the tour to the top. It was our first time on this tour so we toured up the hiking path not knowing that the tour actually starts after crossing a cattle guard and continues along the road until the skin track takes a left and goes up a clear cut next to the cable fun park that runs in summer. From here on out it was a nice skin track through the forest with not many hard spots except for single 20foot section that had very thin snow cover. The highlight of skinning up was gaining a ridge that made it possible to see all the way to Munich on one side and clear to Austria on the other, a beautiful view! After making the ridge it is just 15 minutes or so to the top of the Wank which actually has a running kitchen right now even though the gondola was not working! Very nice but we had to continue without eating a meal because we found some old guys that were going to show us the complicated way to get back down to the parking lot.
Getting down we first went to the opposite side of the hut as the skin track and started making turns down the old ski runs to the base hut which is now the Esterberg Alm. I thought that the work was all done when we got done skinning up but I guess not because after gaining the forest road to get back to the car we had to skate on that path for half a mile before getting back to the down slopping road. Once on the down slopping road it was just and easy 20 minute ski all the way out to the car which was very nice.
After skinning up to the Wank mom was a little tired so she decided to not partake in the night ski tour up the Hausberg to the D9 hut for a beer and something to eat but I thought that I still had some energy in me so I met up with my friend Jeremy and took off up the run at a very fast pace to keep warm in teh night air. We ended up getting up to the top in under an hour which was very good considering his fastest time was an hour and 15 minutes and I had to take my skis of for a section because of how much ice there was! When we got to the top I was ridiculously hungry so I had a beer and two plates of spaghetti bolenese and finished both of them entirely before heading back out into the cold to start our ski down in what ended up being a sea of people! After getting to the bottom we looked back up and you could see hundreds of people coming down with their headlamps winding their way to the base.
The next day I did a tour to the Stuiben kopf and met a mom and son and got the sons number so we will be able to tour next time I come into town which which should be awesome. The backside of the stuiben was pretty filled in and would be easy to tour up for the next time I make my way up that way!
All and all a very fun weekend.