Circular tour – Marquartstein – Schnappenkirche
Beautiful reflection tour of Marquartstein to the snap church
Beautiful reflection tour of Marquartstein to the snap church
distance
duration
highest point
meters upwards
meters downwards
Difficulty
easy
Marquartstein parking bay Freiweidacher Straße – Staudach monument – source – Schnappenkirche – Schnappenbach – Kindlwand – Hochgern/Nock hikers’ car park – Schnappen circular route – starting point for a soul tour to the source with a cult character, a sacred atmosphere in the forest and a church where miracles are said to have happened on the Half-day SalzAlpenTour Marquartstein-Schnappenkirche, which is mostly covered on well-paved forest paths to the Marquartstein hiking car park, you have one thing above all: enough time to breathe deeply in the quiet forest, to escape from everyday life and to recharge your batteries on some lonely benches. Be it at the Staudach monument, which is the first to be reached from the starting point in Freiweidacher Straße near Marquartstein, or at the mystical spring in front of the Schnappenkirche, which is on a more impassable path. A highlight of the round is the great view at the Schnappenkirche. The pure walking time is about four hours. Being alone – many people are drawn to the mountains for precisely this reason. Well – you will probably never be completely alone on the SalzAlpenTour – Marquartstein-Schnappenkirche, it is too well located for that and offers the best views even without climbing the summit. Start of the SalzAlpenTour – Marquartstein-Schnappenkirche is in the Marquartstein district of Freiweidach. Shortly after this district you will find a parking bay right next to the road, our starting point. From here we start hiking on a well-paved forest road, which is often used as a walking route. This road soon leads uphill and offers the first opportunity for a contemplative detour: The Staudach monument, which is a little off the beaten track. This is well marked with a sign to the left of the forest road. At the imposing, religious Staudach monument you will find a wooden bench with a good view of Marquartstein. “Think-time-after” this seems to call out to the hiker, and so you will already take a short break here to come to yourself. If you take a closer look, you will find a memorial stone with a meaningful inscription and, last but not least, a wooden mailbox with the inscription “A word for you”. It is as if the atmosphere at the Staudach monument takes the speed out of the hiker’s step, who now sets his feet more carefully, sharpens his senses for the surroundings and so with open eyes from the Staudach monument over the cul-de-sac and back hike along a deep gorge that the Alplbach has carved out of the stone. We turn sharply to the right at a signpost from the “Diretissima” to the Staudacheralm and “walk for pleasure” first on a forest path, then on a partly very well-trodden path towards the Schnappenkirche. Here, altitude meters are collected and it goes up over hill and dale and roots in sometimes more, sometimes less narrow turns. The hiker’s thoughts escape more and more from everyday life, because almost nothing is heard of it anymore. The dense canopy of beech trees blocks out the hustle and bustle down in the valley, only the sounds of the forest and its animals can be heard. The sometimes very tall, straight trunks of the many trees, under which you climb up on wonderfully soft ground, almost look like the roof of a cathedral. The sun’s rays breaking off branches and leaves also appear like light shining through colorful windows into a church. Eventually, the ground under your hiking boots becomes increasingly rocky, small stones and larger, moss-covered boulders lie around, the path is washed out – and suddenly in the distance the smooth white of the Schnappenkirche (1100 m) shines through the wide halls of the tree trunks. To the right below the normal path, a very muddy path leads to a spring, easily recognizable by the simple wooden cross and several small “Stoamandl” that are piled up. The atmosphere at this modest-looking natural monument is mystical, which represents a counterpart to the nearby Schnappenkirche, which towers high into the sky. As Dorothea Steinbacher writes in her book “Holy Springs”, this spot was probably already a place of water cult among the Celts. According to their assessment, the place seems to have originally been a source sanctuary. The wooden fountain chapel dedicated to Saint Wolfgang is said to have stood above this spring. The Schnappenkirche, which can be seen glowing from afar in the Chiemgau, is also dedicated to St. Wolfgang.
Hochgernparkplatz Marquartstein
Achental - Chiemsee-Chiemgau holiday region
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to