Forststeig Elbsandstein - Day 1 - Schöna to Grenzbaude

The Forststeig officially starts at the Schöna trainstation. We arrived there at around 08:20 by train from Dresden, where we had spent the night. On the train we had seen a few people with quite large backpacks, and as soon as we stepped of the train one guy asked us, if we were walking the Forsteig. We said yes, of course, and so we started into the trail together.

After a first on a cobblestone path the trail soon leads into the forest and onto smaller footpaths. And soon we also had the first confusions, as to where the trail was actually going. Near a pond the trail markings led to the right and then right into the brush. That was a bit off from the gpx track we had downloaded, but since we wanted a real Forststeig-Experience, we decided to follow the yellow bar painted on the trees and enjoyed some bushwhacking. Shortly after the markings lead us back on the trail in a big semi circle and then we were back on track.

Just a few kilometers after the first diversion we came to a track closure due to logging operations. That was unfortunate because that part might have allowed us some views onto the Elbe river from above. Instead we now followed a muddy forest road. It wasn't quite clear where we'd meet up with the original trail, and the signs for the detour were sparse, so we were glad to have our digital and physical maps to ensure we'd get back on track, especially since we had marked some water sources and therefore not taken enough water to last the whole day. We did get back onto the trail right before the spring we had wanted to visit.

After our short stop to fill up the waterbottles, we continued on the trail towards the Großer Zschirnstein. The first of the table mountains Saxon Switzerland is famous for. The higher we got, the more boulders we saw jutting up from the ground, the sandstone carved into stunning, smooth formations.

Upon reaching the top, we came across a couple having their lunch break. We talked for a few minutes, then decided to just all have lunch together and continue our conversation about different trail foods, gear and the weight of each backpack. The encounter, and especially the fact that it had only taken a few words to reach those nerdy hiking topics reminded us quite a lot of our time on the Te Araroa. There almost every conversation in the mountains huts had sooner or later revolved around food and gear.

After everyone had had a bite to eat we continued on our way. Toby, the guy from the train station, decided to keep tagging along with the two of us as we had similar hiking speeds and he enjoyed our company.

The “peak” of the Großer Zschirnstein is large and flat and adorned with a stone column that was historically used for land surveying. On way down the other side of the table mountain, we came through a lot of blueberry bushes, which only had very few blueberries though. Might be quite nice for a snack a bit later in the year though.

Not long after descending from from the Großer Zschirnstein we reached the first official biwak-spot of the Forststeig. Here camping in tents is allowed, but the area also has a tiny hut with bunks that hikers can spend the night in. The hut was designed and constructed by students from the University in Dresden. We really liked it and were a bit sad, that we weren't staying. We had planned our sections to be as evenly spaced as possible, and especially not be too long in the first two days. So we hiked on towards the Grenzbaude, about 18km from the train station in Schöna.

This part of the trail follows the border between Germany and the Czech Republic most of the time. The area is lush green, with ferns growing everywhere and wonderful soft springy ground that's very nice to walk on. Sometimes it follows little creeks for a bit until they wind away into the bushes. Just a few kilometers before we reached the junction to the Grenzbaude there also was another spring, but kind of hard to fill the water bottles from since the small stream was very shallow.