Walking vacations in the Tyrol

In the high, remote East Tyrol mountains, where you go each day should be led by the weather. When cloud descends, you might descend too, for lowland walks – no point going high if there are no views. When there’s less wind and good visibility, you might tackle a higher route.

“We adjust our programme daily according to what the weather and the environment is doing,” says Xania Wear, co-owner of our Austrian walking partner, WearActive. Their East Tyrol chalet sits at 1,800m, commanding views across the landscape. She looks to her local village for inspiration, “it’s a farming community and they’re super adaptable.”

Austria’s Tyrol regions contain many such self-sufficient communities, isolated for centuries by the challenges of the landscape. Today, the regions have a very strong sense of self. You might see hospitality workers wearing traditional dress. Restaurants serve time-honoured recipes so delicious they haven’t been improved upon in decades.

Tourism can be an important vehicle for keeping these traditions alive; simply by bringing your custom to remote mountain restaurants as you walk, you help them stay in business.

Walking is best done with an expert. Bergführers – Austrian mountain guides – train for a long time to show guests around the mountains. Not only are they trained to keep you safe in remote locations, but they know the areas on a personal level. “You can ask her about the local flora and fauna,” says Lottie Joynes, she describes how WearActive’s mountain guide trained for two years, “she knows all about the animals in the park: even down to family specifics and how many offspring they had last year.”

You’ll walk on unmade tracks that can sometimes get rocky as you go higher, but there’s very little scrambling involved. In fact, thanks to the lifts in some areas, you’ll probably end up walking downhill for longer than you walk uphill.

Many regions of Austria offer a ‘vacation card’, giving you access to all the area’s cable cars, chairlifts and local transport to get to the start of your walk. Using public transport helps keep it running for locals, too.

If you choose to try the more challenging walks each day you can make ascents of over 1,000m. If you opt for easier walks, you can still reach some impressive summits by ‘contouring’. You’ll keep to the same altitude by following the mountains’ contour lines – to get some lovely views without too many steep climbs. You’ll be joining the ibexes in no time.

So large that it spans parts of East Tyrol, Carinthia and Salzburg, the Tauern massif is home to a protected park containing Austria’s highest peak. This area also has the accolade of being Austria’s only national park. There are no chairlifts in the park itself, so walking in its alpine meadows, is done, rewardingly, under your own steam.

One of Hohe Tauern’s prettiest valleys, Dorfertal’s entrance is hidden from the world. The narrow Daba Gorge at its entrance is filled with rushing water, the only path a fenced walkway seemingly cut into the rock. Once you’ve passed this threshold, the valley itself is a charming world of wooden mountain huts and farmland.

It’s a mere 2,574m high, but from the summit of the rearing rocky head of Blauspitz in East Tyrol you’re granted an audience with Austria’s highest mountains. Have a picnic on the top, surveying the hulking mass of Großglockner (3,978m), and Großvenediger – Austria’s first and fourth highest mountains respectively. The Kalser Bergbahnen cable car gets you up to a good starting point to make the climb.

Above the treeline, the flowers in alpine meadows flourish, the sunlight unchecked. Edelweiss might be the most well-known Alpine flower, but bright blue gentians are perhaps even more lovely and emblematic. Fluttering visitors, like the rare Apollo butterfly, will fill lepidopterists with joy.

The hearty Tyrolean cuisine is perfect for those who never say ‘when’ if someone is pouring cream over your pudding. Look out for restaurants that sport a green ‘Tiroler Wirtshaus’ badge on their menus, websites or doorways: indicating that they use locally-sourced ingredients and are owner-operated. On the mountains, stop at traditional mountain food huts for lunch, and support the local economy.

When the snow starts, the walking doesn’t have to stop. Winter walking vacations in the Tyrol are a great way to see the landscape transformed. Snowshoes, which are attached over the top of your hiking boots, can be carried in a rucksack until you need them, making you far more adaptable to the environment than you would be on skis.