The planned route from Freiburg to Todtnauberg was considerably longer than and went along of ascent up to the Schauinsland. It still is a challenging mountain tour, even under favourable conditions. Reportedly, the group were not equipped well enough for the venture: despite wintery conditions, some of them wore summer clothing, light shoes, shorts and no head coverings. Instead of using the detailed hiking maps by the Schwarzwaldverein, Keast only had a map from the School Travel Service with a scale of 1:100,000. The map did show all marked hiking trails, but it did not reveal any terrain details.