During their Easter break, the students from Strand School, a grammar school in the south of London, had been on a ten-day long trip to the Black Forest, which included a five-day hiking trip. The group arrived in Freiburg early in the morning of April 16th. A lot of the students had caught little to no sleep on the train ride and were, therefore, tired. On the 17th of April, they started the first part of their hike which was supposed to lead them over Schauinsland to a hostel in Todtnauberg called Radschert.