Kärlingerhaus am Funtensee

A staffed Alpine Club hut (1,638 m) of the DAV Berchtesgaden section, north-west of the Funtensee in the Steinernes Meer. The nearby Funtensee is regarded as Germany's cold pole (−45.9 °C on 24 Dec 2001).

Highlights

• Classic base for crossing the Steinernes Meer
• The Funtensee as Germany's cold pole (a frost hollow with a cold-air lake)
• Ascent from the Königssee via the Saugasse (from Salet or St. Bartholomä)
• Starting point for peaks such as the Schönfeldspitze
• High-alpine karst landscape of the Steinernes Meer

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Kärlingerhaus lies in the Steinernes Meer, one of the largest contiguous karst areas of the Eastern Alps, a labyrinth of white limestone, sinkholes and seeping streams. Directly below spreads the Funtensee, a small high-mountain lake that came to sad fame through a peculiarity: in its bowl-shaped hollow, heavy cold air gathers at night that cannot drain away, and so one of the lowest temperature readings ever measured in Germany, almost minus 46 degrees, was recorded here. Because of this cold trap, only tough plants that defy the frost grow around the lake.

The hut, built by the German Alpine Club at an old alpine pasture site, was always a base for pilgrims and mountaineers who climbed up from the Königssee over the famous Saugasse, a path laid out in countless switchbacks. All around the Funtensee the landscape tells of thousands of years of patient dissolution: rainwater has gnawed the limestone into a bizarre desert of grooves and crevices, in which the water disappears invisibly into the ground and only comes to light again far below at the Königssee. Whoever stays overnight up here, embedded in the wide sea of rock beneath the walls of the Watzmann, experiences a stillness and a remoteness from the world such as has become rare in the densely developed Alps.