"Please bring it back"

Summit book with personal entries stolen

It was only in June that a hobby hiker brought this box and summit book to the Haugstein in the Innviertel region.(Bild: zVg)

The document with many personal entries has disappeared from the Haugstein in the Innviertel region. "Please bring it back", appeals amateur sportswoman Verena Lang, who had left the summit book including a box with several items on her local mountain.

For many mountain enthusiasts, it is now part of the routine after a summit victory: making an entry in the summit book. Most of them leave their name, the current date and the planned route as well as personal impressions. This was one of the reasons why Verena Lang carried a summit book up the 895-metre-high Haugstein at the beginning of June and left it in a box with soap bubbles, handkerchiefs and Jägermeister bottles. "After all, the Haugstein is the highest mountain in the Innviertel region and deserves something like this," says the enthusiastic hiker.

Hike on the day a relative died
However, when she climbed "her" local mountain again this week, she discovered that the box and its contents were missing. "That's very sad, because the book went down really well and was probably a good third full after such a short time," says the 33-year-old. "Many hikers from the surrounding area signed up, but also from further afield. A school class from Andorf immortalized themselves in it. There were also personal texts in it. One woman wrote that she had used the hike to clear her head on the day a relative died," says Lang.

She hopes that the book will be returned to its destination and therefore appeals: "If anyone has taken it, please bring it back or hand it in to the municipality of Vichtenstein."

An old custom
The summit books were created around 1850 and probably evolved from the guest books that were kept at places of pilgrimage, for example. Some also see them as an important source of information when people go missing in the mountains. Unfortunately, they disappear or are destroyed time and again. For example, the summit book on the Ameisstein was torn up around two years ago. On the German Hewen, hikers found the charred remains of the written pages in a barbecue area just this week.