  We report recent efforts by CLS to generate an ensemble with physical light-
and strange-quark masses in a lattice volume of 192x96^3 at $\beta=3.55$
corresponding to a lattice spacing of 0.064 fm. This ensemble is being
generated as part of the CLS 2+1 flavor effort with improved Wilson fermions.
Our simulations currently cover 5 lattice spacings ranging from 0.039 fm to
0.086 fm at various pion masses along chiral trajectories with either the sum
of the quark masses kept fixed, or with the strange-quark mass at the physical
value. The current status of simulations is briefly reviewed, including a short
discussion of measured autocorrelation times and of the main features of the
simulations. We then proceed to discuss the thermalization strategy employed
for the generation of the physical quark-mass ensemble and present first
results for some simple observables. Challenges encountered in the simulation
are highlighted.
