Of all the European countries blessed with sensational mountain scenery, Austria remains the walker’s favourite. There’s something about the combination of the mind-blowing drama of the Austrian landscape and the good humour and generosity of the people that’s irresistible to walkers, from absolute beginners to hardened mountain-hurdlers.
The paths that cross ridges and wind through valleys are beautifully maintained and efficiently marked. There’s a network of inexpensive, welcoming Hütten or mountain inns that British ramblers would give their eye teeth for. And from April to October the tourist information centres deal out walking maps, information, contact details for mountain guides and tips as though every other customer was a hiker in search of a good walk – which in the case of the Vorarlberg and Tirol regions of western Austria is not far from the truth.
You don’t have to be a hairy-chested peak buster to enjoy walking in Austria. From the highest Tirolean alp to the gentlest Vorarlberg path, there is something for everyone.
Vorarlberg: Bregenzerwald
The Bregenzerwald, a seductive area of undulating pastures and wooded hill ranges, lies in the north of the Vorarlberg, the region that occupies the north-west tip of Austria. My wife, Jane, and daughter, Mary, were accompanying me on this, their first Austrian adventure, and the Hotel Krone in the Bregenzerwald village of Hittisau – recently refurbished by its owners Helene and Dietmar Nussbaumer, using local craftsmen working in local wood – proved the perfect base for expeditions into the fields, wood and hills nearby.
On our first day we just strolled around Hittisau, pursuing the ''Wood Trail’’ from one beautifully made wooden house to the next, visiting the village cooper and beekeeper Peter Lässer in his resin-scented workshop, stopping in at the Women’s Museum with its startling and challenging modern sculpture displays – not what you’d expect to find in a sleepy hill village, and all the better for that. Next day we followed the newly waymarked Wasserwanderweg along the jade-green Bolgenach river at the feet of Hittisau, looking for dippers and dragonflies. We passed a group of nuns, out for a walk in full habit, who all chorused ''Grüss Gott!’’ and grinned shyly at us; then came up from the river through the yard of a flower-bedecked old watermill, up to an inn on a crossroads where we drank coffee in the seductive scent of wood smoke.
It was the time of year when the Bregenzerwald cows all walk down from the high summer pastures to spend the winter in their home villages in the valley. Hittisau’s neighbouring village of Schwarzenberg held a festival day, and we went along to see the cows, their coats shining like velvet from the rich summer grass, paraded through the streets with much clonking of neck bells and clinking of wine glasses. It made us keen to see an alpine pasture ourselves. Luckily the Schwarz family’s Helmingenalpe, up in the mountains beyond Hittisau, proved to be hanging onto its cattle for a few days more. Walks leader Christoph Oberhauser took us there by winding paths, past the Lecknersee and up through delectable flowery meadows thick with crocuses, scabious and royal blue gentians. Marianne Schwarz showed us her vast copper milk cauldron, her cool dairy and subterranean cheese store filled with big fragrant rounds of cheese. We sat at a long table by the window, the wooden platters in front of us piled with slabs of cheese – salty, sweet, new, mature, studded with chives – tasting and talking and sipping strong, clear perry from a wooden barrel. Now that’s a civilised way to walk.
Hittisau walks
''Wood Trail’’ (one hour – easy): Stroll around the village admiring the old, carved, wooden buildings and architect-designed new ones; visit Peter Lässer the village carpenter (0043 5513 2966), and the Women’s Museum (5513 620930; www.frauenmuseum.com).
Wasserwanderweg (two hours – easy): A waymarked trail with information boards along Bolgenach River.
Lecknersee and Helmingenalpe (four hours with farm stop – easy/moderate): From Kälberweidealpen car park by Lecknersee and Gästhof Höfle to Helmingenalpe alpine farm (5513 6117 – open May to September for cheese, but check first!), returning via Äuelealpe.
Staying, eating: Hotel Krone, Am Platz, 6952 Hittisau, 5513 6201; www.krone-hittisau.at – warm, friendly, stylish, comfortable.
More info: Hittisau Tourist Office (5513 620950); http://homes.tiscover.com/vbgtour/pdf_files/2005/Wanderlust_E_05.pdf contains excellent walks in the locality.
Vorarlberg: Lech
Remembering a splendid hike I’d enjoyed a few years before around Lech, a short way south-east of the Bregenzerwald, I left Jane and Mary to wander about Hittisau and its green plateau, and took myself off for a day to revisit some old stamping grounds in the east of the Vorarlberg.
The Kalbelesee lake was full and shining, the path through the beautiful green Auenfelder meadows as lovely with buttercups and cyclamen as I’d remembered. I stopped at the tiled old farmstead to drink sharp buttermilk, and tackled the steep path up out of Lech towards the Stierloch Joch and the Ravensburghütte mountain inn with a smile on my face, looking forward to dark beetroot soup, a buzz of talk and rumble of singing. If there’s a better definition of mountain bliss, I’ve never found it.
A three-day hutting hike around Lech:
Day 1 – Path 10 Lech-Zug, Path 55 Zug-Ravensburghütte (about three hours; moderate); Day 2 – Path 61 Ravensburghütte-Spuller See, Path 601 Spuller See-Freiburgerhütte (about six hours; hard); Day 3 – Path 62 and Path 10 to Lech (about four hours; moderate). Path 601 is a Höhenweg, for experienced walkers only, not recommended in bad weather.
Map: 1:50,000 Lech Wanderkarte.
Mountain guides, map, info: Lech Tourismus, A-6764 Lech am Arlberg (0043 5583 21610; www.lech-zuers.at.
South Tirol
The deep green valley of the Zillertal, tucked down in the beautiful south Tirol region near the Italian border, has just about everything a walking family could hope for: a network of strolling routes at low level in the bottom of the valley, a multitude of cable-cars and chairlifts rising to stations up the mountainsides, and a chain of well-marked mountain footpaths ranging from easy high-level circuits to serious peak-scrambling for those with confidence and energy to burn.
Rain and mist had cut off the high peaks, but our guide Walter Ludl knew plenty of other delights. The first day saw us exploring far up the Zillergrund, a narrow and dramatic side valley off the Zillertal. We found a track running along the shores of the Stausee lake reservoir, and followed it under tall slopes to the farm and alpine inn at the lake head.
Here, idling outside the wooden hut over a glass of beer at a table among cheery walkers, we appreciated how the farm’s mountainous situation, and the zen-like docility of its resident pigs, cows and hens, have earned it the appropriate nickname of ''Little Tibet’’.
Next morning we swung by cableway and chairlift up to the Penken alp. Here we wandered along the ridge paths in the cold mountain air, winding in and out of the Knorren, a set of jagged teeth of naked grey limestone, to reach the Penkenjoch café and its mugs of hot chocolate.
Then it was down a snaky path through pine trees to the Penkenbahn station and an eagle’s-view swoop back into the valley, where a few hours later we were throwing Seventies disco shapes in the bar of the Hotel Strass to the cheesy sounds of DJ Stocky.
On our last day we travelled north up the Zillertal to the village of Fügen, collected a map from the tourist office, and took off along a path, looking over old houses with flowery balconies and ground levels packed with wood for winter.
Zillertal walks
Fügen village circuit (one hour – easy): Through the old village to join Beleuchteter Panoramaweg; north to waterfalls, loop back on higher path to Marienbergkirche. Map from Fügen tourist office (5288 62262).
Zillergrund (three hours there and back – easy): From Adlerblick restaurant (0664 200 0332) on Speicher Zillergrund reservoir dam, along north bank to ''Little Tibet’’ alpine farm at head of reservoir, then back to Adlerblick.
Penkenalp (three hours – moderate): Penkenbahn cable-car station to Penkenjoch pass, descending to Lanersbach.
Staying: Hotel Strass, Hauptstrasse 470, 6290 Mayrhofen, (5285 6705; www.hotelstrass.com). Long-established, welcoming resort hotel with enjoyable nightlife.
Eating: Der Metzergerwirt, Finsing 16, 6271 Udens, (5288 62559; www.dermetzgerwirt.at). Hannes and Alexandra Hell’s haven of good food and ambience where locals and gourmets rub shoulders.
More information: Mayrhofen TIC, Europahaus, Mayrhofen, (5285 6760; www.mayrhofen.at).
North Tirol
Returning to the Tirol on a solo walking trip, I decided to head north to try out a section of the recently established Adlerweg, the 175-mile Eagle’s Way route that crosses north Tirol from east to west. It offers the grandest possible Alpine scenery to any hill walker with plenty of stamina, decent balance and a head for heights.
From the Karwendel valley, a nature reserve about 10 miles north of Innsbruck across the mountains, I struck out eastwards into the valley of the Filztal, walking easily and taking time to look around. The view ahead was sensational, a dozen miles of jagged overbearing mountains as perpendicular as cliffs, their feet spreading through last winter’s unmelted snow patches and vast fans of scree.
A serpentine path led across the loose pebbly slopes of the Kaltwasserkar, the Cold Water Screes, an obstacle course of tree roots and slippery rocks. I could see the Falkenhütte coming a long way off, and was ready for a good night’s kip by the time I had climbed up to the 6,000ft saddle where the wood-walled hut perched under the giant grey cliffs of the Laliderer Spitze. Cheese dumpling soup and cloudy Weissbier seemed ambrosial in a room full of the stories and laughter of mountaineers.
At dawn I watched the sun smack the sombre bluffs of the Laliderer Spitze with blinding colours. Before 8am I was off along the immense scree slopes fanning like skirts from the mountain walls that towered 3,000 feet. The Adlerweg rose to a pass under the sphinxlike outcrop of The Devil’s Head, then fell away into the deep valley of the Eng, loud with cow bells. A refreshing glass of buttermilk at an alpine farm far below, and then it was on and up in beautiful clear sunshine to the Lamsenjochhütte, another wood-panelled mountain inn on a green saddle under great rock walls. A quick bite to eat, and I was slipping and sliding in zigzags down the mountain to journey’s end in Pertisau on the shores of the Achensee 3,000ft below.
Two days on the Adlerweg
Day 1 – Karwendelhaus to Falkenhütte, (allow about four hours; moderate); Day 2 – Falkenhütte to Lamsenjochhütte (five hours; moderate/hard); Lamsenjochhütte to Pertisau (two hours; moderate).
Map: Freytag & Berndt 1:50,000 WK323 ''Karwendel–Mittelwald’’. Available from Stanfords (www.stanfords.co.uk); widely available locally.
Mountain guides, info: Tirol Tourist Board (www.tyrol.com); mountain guide Mike Rutter (664 262 3692; michael.rutter@tirolwerbung.at).
The huts
There are more than 1,000 Hütten scattered about the mountains, most within half a day’s hike of the next, open from June to September. The Hütte offers a tasty hot meal, a shower, an evening’s yarning over beer, wine and schnapps, and a comfortable bed in a dormitory or (for a supplement) a private room. Prices are very reasonable, and members of the Austrian Alpine Club (www.aacuk.org.uk) get a discount.
Reading
Walking Austria’s Alps, Hut to Hut by Jonathan Hurdle is published by Cordee (01455 611185; www.cordee.co.uk) and costs £9.95.
Eating
Don’t look at the scales! Austrian mountain food is long on calories, for warmth and energy. Try Krapfen (cheese, potato, onion, fried in rye batter); Bauernschmaus (Farmer’s Stew – smoked meat, dumplings, potatoes and gravy); Schliachtrnudln (noodles, cheese, cream); Kasspatzlang (noodles, onions, cheese); Schoderblatlang (sweet bread pudding); Graukas (blue cheese from the mountains). Cheese from alpine farms is wonderful.