Approximately 2 weeks before our departure to Tuscany I was talking with my uncle (who is a passionate photographer like me) on the phone and told him about my problems regarding the Neuschwanstein spot. Surprisingly, I came to know that almost 30 years ago he was also trying to find this location. Back then he asked a local photographer for it, and his answer was very clear – but not helpful at all:

“I won’t tell you anything about the way up. You know, every year we retrieve some people from the Pöllat gorge who have fallen to their death. Do me a favor and just get yourself a nice post card.”

Of course my uncle did not merely buy a post card, but haphazardly explored and ascended the mountain side - which he very quickly bitterly regretted. In hindsight, he recapped that he must have followed the wrong climb tracks quite early, which led him further and further onto a steep slope and directly into the most life-threatening situation of his entire life.

Only with sheer luck he did manage to cheat the hangman’s noose a couple of times, which his diary entry impressively recounts.

Sadly enough the weather conditions were far from being perfect upon our arrival. It was cold and rainy, and heavy fog rolled in from time to time. To get a first impression of the castle we made our way up to “Mary’s bridge” (Marienbrücke), which was closed due to maintenance. It didn’t matter too much really, because the conditions soon went from “far from being perfect” to miserable. We could barely see the castle through the thick layers of fog, and the rain was pouring down on us. We had to accept that it wouldn’t be very responsible to climb a steep unknown mountain side under these circumstances - even more so with the castle being hidden in the clouds. We had to count on the next day, although the weather forecast didn’t give any reason for hope. Our failure became official when I first looked outside the next morning. Not only were the viewing conditions as bad as on the previous day, but the night brought the season’s first snow as well. Not the beautiful, white and puffy snow either, but its ugly sister instead: more rain than snow, which was grey, wet and melting quickly. The weather forecast for the next few days was so devastating that we left in the early morning, postponed our forthcoming stay in the Dolomites to our return leg, and headed straight to the Tuscany.

In the end the only image I got from my first approach was the one I called “Autumn under Neuschwanstein”, which I took freehand from the arguably most non-exclusive location you can think of – the central car park …

In the summer of 2019 I received a message from my 500px friend Lukas Zitz telling me he was about to fly to his favorite island, Tenerife again and would like to photograph Neuschwanstein Castle as part of a stopover. I offered the information about the secret spot I had gathered so far, but discovered when doing so that some of the online resources seemed to have mysteriously vanished. I found the YouTube-Clip to have been deleted, and a new test with the geo-coordinates offered by the hiking blog was impossible, as only the position of the castle itself seemed to be available in the data of the freshly downloaded file.

These circumstances did not hinder my obsession with that location – quite the opposite. If I hadn’t have known better, I could have felt like being on the track of a secret service cover-up operation. Already hard-to-find information was redacted, and video material of evidence had been recently deleted. Would it be appropriate to warn my uncle? Not that important witnesses were about to disappear without a trace … Cripes! I mustn’t become too acquainted with these ridiculous thoughts, but rather drill down on that location matter sooner rather than later! ;-)

In the weeks that followed, I gently shifted the family’s focus in relation to our travel plans for the autumn holidays that were initially to Germany (“Why not explore our own country?”), to Bavaria (“We have never been there yet!”) and then finally to the Allgaeu (“Beautiful landscape!”). Shame to he who thinks evil of it.

Unfortunately, only one part of my deceitful plan came together. Although we finally booked a nice accommodation in the village of Wildsteig (just 20 miles away from Hohenschwangau) my hope for Lukas bearing the load of the heavy pioneer’s work and providing me with first class information wasn’t fulfilled. He changed his travel plans and didn’t visit Neuschwanstein Castle at all.

Two months later, when my wife and I were enjoying the eve of our wedding anniversary on the terrace of our holiday house in Wildsteig, I seized upon the opportunity to seek her approval of my plans to explore the secret Neuschwanstein spot the next day. I didn’t anticipate getting mission permission would be that hard. It’s not like she didn’t see that question coming after my having developed a strong preference for spending our holidays in the Allgaeu region. She knew about my excitement about this special location, my fruitless hours of research, and my failure in 2018. However, she was also aware of my uncle’s story and was understandably worried about the ascent.

Over and over again I had to assure her I would not carelessly risk my life for an image. Being a husband and father, I am very well aware of my responsibilities, but I think I am also quite good in realistically evaluating my physical capabilities and potential risks. Although my wife didn’t seem to be as convinced as me in this matter, in the end she complied with a heavy heart.

Due to my excitement it was not easy to relax when I went to bed, but I guess it was the unpredictability of the challenges I was about to face that had the greater impact on my restless night. Am I really going to make it to that myth-enshrouded place tomorrow: the one that had already kept my uncle busy nearly 30 years ago? Will the terrain be so steep that I will have to climb rocks? What if the Pöllat river is swollen and I can’t get to the other side?

At noon the next day, I stood grinning at the bank of the Pöllat river. While the torrent had quite an impressive and wild character downstream, up here my heroic deed was merely about crossing a trickle - a rather tricky trickle, however. I slipped on the extremely slippery rocks and almost took an involuntary bath, but got away with a pair of wet feet. How much better could my search possibly begin?

Approaching the mountain side with squishing shoes I slowly worked my way up for a while. From time to time I stumbled upon remains of climbing tracks and followed them as long as they led roughly in the right direction. On some parts of the track I was able to walk upright, while on others, more physical effort was required, where I had to crawl on all fours while grabbing rocks and roots.

After 30 minutes I had to take a break. On the one hand I was a bit exhausted, on the other hand I had the impression that I am in for a trickier climb ahead. So I dropped my camera bag, had a short rest and began to explore the potential route without the load of my equipment. Much to my regret I realized quite early that I couldn’t justify taking this risk. It was difficult enough without my bag, but would be life-threatening with that weight on my shoulders; at least on the return leg.

After briefly thinking about the most reasonable options I decided not to do the climb, but I also decided not to give up either. I explored the area for an alternative route and sure enough, found one that was safer after all. Besides having to cross a very steep slope my biggest problem was the lack of orientation from then on - it is quite hard to find a way if the destination is unknown. 

All of a sudden, the vegetation became thinner at a certain point and opened up to a view of the castle. No drum roll, no fanfare, it was just sitting there - and I was irritated. In fact, I was so baffled that I neither saw the scaffolding on the front of the castle nor noticed the slight perspective discrepancy in comparison to the already-mentioned YouTube video. Due to the rather overcast day and hazy atmosphere, I also couldn’t spot the two lakes and the background mountains, but this fact didn’t dampen my slowly emerging excitement – apparently I had finally found the location!

Much to her relief I informed my wife by phone about her man’s still-intact physical integrity, told her about my success and began to photograph. In the next two hours I waited patiently for the light to get a little more interesting, but it wasn’t meant to be. It just didn’t get any better than in the image “Beauty and the Flaw”.

I decided to visit this place one more time during our vacation, preferably in more appealing weather conditions and at a more advantageous time of the day. Given the westward viewing direction, a sunset shot could turn out really nice, but I would have to approach the following descent in quickly fading light. As this appeared to be too dangerous, I decided to go for a sunrise image someday instead.

When I tried to pre-visualize that morning scene, I was quite convinced it could work very well. The first warm light of the rising sun would hit the peaks of the distant mountains, whereas Neuschwanstein Castle and its surroundings still fall in the cold and blueish shadows.

With a little bit of luck, I might even get some ground fog billowing above the landscape and the two lakes in the middle ground …

On this Saturday morning I got up at 6:00 am, parked my car at 7:00 am after a 30-minute drive, and reached the entrance of the Pöllat gorge after a short walk of 15 minutes. As I really did like the squishing noise of wet shoes the last time I was here, I availed myself of a pair when crossing the Pöllat river 5 minutes later and approached the mountain side in a slight hurry to avoid missing the sunrise at 7:50 am.

Equipped with my freshly acquired orientation super-powers I made it up quite fast and decided to therefore look out for an even higher view point as I was about to reach the spot of my last visit. Instead of merely crossing the tricky steep slope at the end of the route I followed it upwards for a while and found myself at the very place I was convinced to have had already reached 4 days ago. 

Very slowly the obvious began to dawn on me – I hadn’t made it to the right spot at my last visit. From up here everything looked just as expected: Neuschwanstein throned nicely framed by the “Alpsee” and the “Schwansee” majestically over the partly ground fog covered landscape, while the peaks of the background mountains already caught the day’s first light and started to glow.