Lautersee
The name gives it away before you arrive: Lautersee means clear, pure — and the water earns it. Fed almost entirely by underground springs, the lake sits at just under 1,000 metres in a wide Alpine meadow, and on a still morning the Karwendel ridgeline doubles itself perfectly in the surface.
At twelve hectares and up to twenty metres deep, it's large enough to feel genuinely wild, small enough that you can walk its perimeter without commitment. Freshly caught fish comes to the table at the inns on the shore. The Maria Königin chapel, its walls painted with Lüftlmalerei frescoes, stands at the water's edge like a footnote someone thought to add in 1993.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who keep coming back tend to time the walk from Mittenwald carefully: the path via the Mariengrotte and the Lainbach waterfall takes about forty-five minutes and arrives at the lake feeling earned. Most regulars eat at the inn with the outdoor deck, order the fish, and leave the diving tower to the children.
The story behind Lautersee
The lake had no formal hospitality until 1931, when Katharina and Josef Kemser opened a modest restaurant with seven guestrooms on its shore — the beginning of what became Hotel Lautersee. Five years later, with the 1936 Winter Olympics drawing international visitors to nearby Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Sporthotel Seeheim was built to handle the overflow, arriving ready with twenty-one rooms.
The hotel passed through the family: Johanna Kemser ran it through the 1950s, and Josef Kemser — a later generation — took over in 1980 after formal hotel training. The Maria Königin chapel, the lake's most recent addition, was built by the local mountain costume association and consecrated in 1995.
Good to know
From Mittenwald station it's roughly 3 km — walk it in under an hour, or take the seasonal bus (May–October) from the station or Dekan-Karl-Platz. Swimming is free. In winter the lake freezes and becomes an ice-skating surface. Restaurants keep their own hours.
Summer water temperatures reach 18–22°C, making swimming genuinely comfortable from late June through August. By September the lake cools quickly — down to single figures by October — and by December it begins to freeze. Spring arrivals in May will find the water still cold (around 5–11°C) but the meadow light already sharp and clear.
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What travellers say about Lautersee
Nice walk from Mittenwald to Lautersee. Not difficult at all and peaceful route.
Beautiful alpine lake, honestly not that impressive or stupendous as many other lakes in Bavaria, very small and grassy, water not that blue and definitely not crystal clear. But every man to his own taste. A star off because it's overly touristic and some of the establishments here feel a little bit expensive for the area…
Very pretty and cold lake. You can relax in the grass nearby or pay to use a local bath. The lake is colder the deeper you get and has lots of fish. There are also almost no tourists here
Wow! Beautiful, peaceful. One of my favourite lakes in Oberbayern
A piece of intact world. Hopefully for a long time. This is an ideal place to enjoy regional food and beverages on a terrace
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