The Inn has its source in Switzerland near the famous St. Moritz and then flows through Austria to Germany. The city that probably everyone associates with the river is beautiful Innsbruck, the starting point for our expedition. From there, we will travel around 300 kilometres to Passau. The Inn flows together with the Danube and the Ilz in the so-called Three Rivers City. The whole trip from Innsbruck to Passau should be completed in three days. I asked Mario Stecher back in summer 2015 whether he would be interested in doing this tour. As was to be expected, he was immediately enthusiastic and agreed to join me.
We trained often and a lot together, planning and trying out new things that would help us on the expedition. On the Easter weekend, we really got going. We had an appointment at Munich Central Station in the afternoon and travelled to Innsbruck by train. In the evening, we checked our luggage and, above all, our equipment. We both paddled on iSUP boards and had several fins and a spare paddle for each person. We set the alarm for 4.30am the next morning.
In the early, dark morning, we pushed our boards and luggage a good kilometre through Innsbruck, which was still asleep, to the river using a shopping trolley we had borrowed the night before. Mario secured the dry bags on the boards, I took the shopping trolley back to LIDL. The light of the moon reflected off the snow-covered mountains. At 5.30am on a starry night, after all the planning and training, the time had finally come. We climbed through the slope with our equipment and headlamps on our heads and started the first day at -4 degrees.
Day 1 - Beavers, muesli bars and bad luck
It was really cold in the mornings, but luckily we had often tried out which combination of neoprene shoes would be the best to keep our feet warm for a whole day. The drysuits were an important part of our kit. The first day got off to a great start and we had planned to take a break for five to ten minutes every two hours on the board in order to lose as little time as possible. So we had breakfast on the water at dusk. The small water snack consisted of a muesli bar. Mario and I realised that the next few days wouldn't be much fun in culinary terms, as we each had three kilograms of muesli bars with us. The paddling was wonderful, we could hear the occasional splash from the embankment. It took us a while to work out that it was beavers jumping into the water in fear and diving under. We were travelling fast and had a good current.
Around midday, it became pleasantly warm and the sun accompanied us throughout the day. To break up the monotonous meal, we enjoyed a kebab on the river promenade in Kufstein. Shortly afterwards, we made the acquaintance of the first barrage. We managed to get our planks around the massive concrete structure with a specially designed towing vehicle. Towards the evening, it became increasingly difficult to concentrate - on the very first day, I managed to destroy my paddle during a break. Sitting backwards on my board, I drifted against large angular stones. Unfortunately, the paddle knob protruded a little beyond my board and was smashed without further ado. It was just as well that we had spare paddles with us. In the long run, paddling was sapping our strength and we declared Rosenheim to be a feasible destination for the day. At around 7.30 p.m., and after several weirs that we had to overcome on land, we arrived at our destination for the first stage of the day. The first kilo of muesli bars had been used up. With our boards in our luggage, we went to a hotel near the river. We made sure to get to bed early to catch up on the sleep we had lost by getting up so early. We set the alarm for 5.30am the next morning.
Day 2 - Power cut and telephone terror
Day two started with clogged eyes, little motivation and a few blisters on my fingers. We quickly slipped into our warm drysuits in the room and off we went. We had already booked a taxi for just before six o'clock the previous evening. The accommodation was also paid for. So just repeat everything from yesterday morning, drybags on, drysuit closed, a quick breakfast bar and off we went. Fortunately, we were no longer so deep in the Inn Valley, it was warmer and a little brighter, so we could leave out the headlamp. The beavers accompanied us again through the morning hours. Unfortunately, after a few hours we realised that the current had become very weak as the river was often dammed up. We knew that there were a lot of weirs - 20 of them to be precise. However, we had hoped that the water would come to a standstill at most one kilometre before the weir, but no, it was different. In most cases, the current dried up nine kilometres beforehand. Despite the fact that we were able to transport our boards ashore, a weir that you have to portage a kilometre around is not easy. We had the weather on our side, so we were able to take off our drysuits during the day.
We were in an irritable mood as we realised that we were simply not making any progress. When we then climbed through the embankment behind a weir to take a shortcut and injured ourselves on stinging nettles and thorns, our mood was pretty low. As the day progressed, we decided to make Altötting our destination for the day. It soon became clear that it was stupid to allow ourselves an extra hour's sleep in the morning, as it was getting really late. We needed our headlamps again. We simply put our boards in the front garden of a house that no longer looked very busy. It was 9.30 pm and we were pretty exhausted. Afterwards, we wanted to call a taxi in comfort. But that turned out to be more complicated than we had hoped. I explained our situation to the woman on the phone: that we were sitting somewhere by the river and someone should please pick us up and take us to the inn. She then asked what we were doing by the river and whether we couldn't get to a larger road somewhere. I answered "no", slightly annoyed, because we'd just been paddling for fourteen and a half hours and we were arse cold. The taxi woman then laughed at me - I hung up annoyed. Mario then threw a tiny little tantrum, telling me how stupid we are for doing this and how shit the world is and, and, and...
Completely annoyed, I rang the third company. I immediately realised that the lady on the other end of the line was trying to stifle her laughter - which she was unable to do. During her fit of laughter, I slowly realised that the taxi companies obviously have a shared switchboard. I then threw a tantrum and Mario was allowed to carry on phoning. In the end, we lost the little argument and a taxi picked us up in the nearest town - so we had to paddle a bit more. When we arrived at the guesthouse, we ordered three more portions of chips, two of roast pork with dumplings and one of spaetzle to celebrate the day. After more than 14 hours of paddling, you just get hungry, Mario explained to the waitress, who was obviously a little surprised that two smelly guys in long johns had placed a family order here. At 11.00 pm we fell into bed, dog-tired.
Day 3 - Weirs and bubbles galore
On the third day, motivation was high again, as the final stage from Altötting to Passau lay ahead of us. The alarm clock got us out of bed at 4.00 a.m. this time so that we didn't get stressed about time again. I taped my hands first thing in the morning because the blisters hadn't gone away. The tiredness and exertion of the last few days was in our bones. We paddled off again in the dark and passed a few villages at night. It was a strange feeling to see the first early risers running along the banks with their dogs, while we had already had a few hours of exercise behind us. The riverbed was wide and deep, although it seemed very shallow in places. We then surmised that this must be due to our slightly limited perception. We paddled stubbornly ahead of each other, but it was fun, there was no wind and, as on the other days, it became pleasantly warm again around midday. But the weirs made the day tough, they followed each other more closely than ever before. The kilometres slowly ticked by on the GPS clock. Towards evening we paddled into Passau and both of us were hugely relieved. Totally exhausted, we reached the shore right at the point where the Inn, Danube and Ilz converge. It was a great feeling to have arrived.
I took a taxi back to the railway station. During the train journey to Munich, I counted 18 blisters on my fingers, Mario was luckier with only eight. However, we both found it very difficult to walk in a straight line. We arrived in Munich completely destroyed. Mario stumbled to his connecting train to the Allgäu and I staggered to my mum's car, feeling extremely tired and nauseous. The next morning Mario rang me and said briefly: "Hey Dude, we paddled 42.5 hours in three days. Dude, that's crazy, isn't it?" I think it was only at that moment that we realised we'd really done it.
