Zugspitze Cable Car

Most cable cars are a way up a mountain; the Seilbahn Zugspitze is an engineering landmark in its own right, and the ride itself is the reason to come. It climbs from the shore of the Eibsee, a lake at the foot of the mountain near Grainau, to the summit station on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, on the border with Austria. In a single section the cabins rise about 1,945 metres, the greatest height difference of any aerial tramway in the world in one span of rope. The line opened in December 2017, replacing the Eibsee cable car of 1963, which had run on almost the same route for more than half a century.

The numbers explain why the journey feels so dramatic. The slope length is 4,467 metres, and above the single support tower the cabins hang on a free span of 3,213 metres, the longest of any cable car when it opened. That tower is itself a record: a steel lattice mast 127 metres tall, the highest of its kind for an aerial tramway anywhere and the tallest cable car support in Europe. Each of the two cabins carries up to 120 passengers and is glazed all round down to the floor, with heated windows so that the view stays clear in any weather. The ropes were made in Switzerland and each weighs well over a hundred tonnes; the whole installation was built by Doppelmayr/Garaventa and is operated by the Bayerische Zugspitzbahn Bergbahn, the company that also runs the old rack railway to the summit plateau.

The ride takes under ten minutes. For much of it the cabin seems to float free of the mountain: the Eibsee drops away below, the walls of the north face come close, and the summit station, a new building of steel and glass, juts up to 25 metres out over the precipice. At the top is a large terrace at almost 3,000 metres, where on a clear day the view reaches across the Alps of four countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Many visitors combine the cable car with the rack railway, which tunnels through the mountain to the Zugspitzplatt plateau below the summit, to make a round trip; from the Austrian side the Tyrolean Zugspitze cable car from Ehrwald arrives at the same summit.

Getting there

The valley station stands on the shore of the Eibsee near Grainau, about 9 km from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The nearest airport is Innsbruck Airport (INN) in Austria, about 34 km away as the crow flies; within Germany, Memmingen Airport (FMM) is about 82 km away. The Bavarian Zugspitze Railway runs from its station in Garmisch-Partenkirchen via Grainau to an Eibsee stop by the valley station before continuing up through the mountain, and there is a car park at the Eibsee. On fine days it is worth arriving early.