Übergossene Alm

The Übergossene Alm is the summit plateau of the Hochkönig, the highest and southernmost mountain block in the Berchtesgaden Alps. The plateau tilts gently northwards and covers about fifteen square kilometres. Only in the south do sheer rock faces drop away for nearly a thousand metres. The name comes from a local legend about the glacier that once covered the plateau. The glacier has shrunk from about five and a half square kilometres in 1888 to just one and a half square kilometres today. It has split into three small, crevasse-free ice fields. The plateau is ringed by several peaks above 2,850 metres, including the main summit and the Tenneck, Floßkogel and Schoberköpfe. The Torsäule pinnacle marks the eastern edge where the plateau falls away above the Salzach valleys. Visitors reach the plateau from the Arthurhaus hut, passing the Torsäule along the way. The high oval rim of two-thousanders forms a natural boundary around the gently sloping summit. The remaining ice fields lie scattered across the plateau’s northern tilt. Views stretch across the Berchtesgaden Alps and down to the Salzach side valleys.