Last week during the European version of Carnival holiday, we ski toured for 5 days and 4 nights on the Silvretta tour along the Austrian-Swiss border. This is quite a famous ski route, known for being of intermediate level and an excellent first hut-to-hut multi-day tour. Both of these claims were true. Route-finding was easy with maps, gps, and traffic. Climbs up and ski downs were engaging and slightly challenging, yet short enough to not completely wreck us. The huts were the most comfortable I have yet seen–all with hot showers, private bunk rooms and very high quality food. Overall, this was an outstanding first multi-day/hut tour for us and our friends.

In looking at the tour online, it looks like we did what most tour-operators and guides end up doing with their clients. But there are so many huts and routes in the area. Everyday we ran into people who were touring to other huts from us, so it wasn’t a total crowded highway situation. All of the huts give a small discount to alpine club members. We are members of the German Alpine Federation (DAV) but our friends from the States were also able to show their American Alpine Club (AAC) membership cards for the same discount (we also maintain our AAC membership). This is a change in recent years–AAC members used to need to purchase a hut stamp to get the discount. Please always join one of these clubs before heading into the mountains. Helicopter rescues are expensive and you’ll want to be covered in the event of evacuation–which is common.

Like most people in recent years, we began our tour by leaving our car at multi-day parking up the road in Galtür, and skiing a half day at the huge party-obsessed Ischgl resort. A new tram at the far side of Ischgl enables tourers to begin the Silvretta with a simple off-piste ski down to the Hiedelberger Hut.

Having only previously spent nights in huts in Italy and Germany, Hiedelberger was our first DAV-run Austrian hut and we all loved it. We booked the space early enough to have a private room for just the five of us. Private rooms have their own sinks and an extra nice touch is that they also give you a small towel–quite a luxury in ski huts! But the best aspect of this hut was the staff. They were all so friendly, welcoming and helpful. You could tell they took pride in the job they were doing. This may have something to do with their proximity to the ski resort. Plenty of people ski down to the hut for lunch and then continue back out below the hut where you can re-access the resort lifts. But we appreciated their kindness and their cooking.

On day two, we got out of the hut by 9:00 am and were on our way up the valley and over the pass, to ski down to the Jamtal hut. The wind was howling, but it was a clear, sunny day, so we appreciated the visibility. It took us about 4.5 hours to ski from Heidelberger to Jamtal hut. There are no glaciers to cross on this leg as long as you stick to the direct route. The ski down was soft and enjoyable–tracked but not crusted. I think the wind helped keep the air cool and the snow soft. To get down to Jamtal, you follow a riverbed and there’s a point where you navigate around a large rock and get your first glimpse of Jamtal hut. Famous for its size and ice climbing towers outside, Jamtal is quite a sight to behold in the backcountry.

This is a large and busy hut. They have a snow cat shuttle service to bring people up from the village so it is often used as a weeklong base for mountaineering classes. So the hut was full of people ski touring, people staying for a week or longer, and tourists who also ride the snow cat. Everyone talks about how Jamtal hut is the best but it was not our favorite. It was the only hut where we had to purchase booties–all other huts provide shoes. Compared to the Heidelberger hut, the service was downright rude. But we saw them being nice to guides and their groups so maybe ours is not a common experience–as an unguided ski tour group, we were in the minority. They do provide free soup in the afternoon which is a nice touch, but the food at the other huts was much better quality. Our room at Jamtal was the best–it was a corner room with 5 beds and was large enough to have a table and chairs.

We stayed at Jamtal for two nights with the plan being to ski some surrounding peaks in the second day there. But a blizzard blew in our first night and the next day it snowed hard with driving wind. It was not safe to venture far out. So we did a snow walk, took naps, practiced crevasse rescues on the indoor climbing wall and did some beacon search practice in their outdoor beacon park. If you are stuck for a day at Jamtal, there is at least more to do and more space to stay in comfortably. We felt fortunate that our only bad weather day was the one where we were scheduled to stay put. What luck!

The day after the blizzard was beautiful–little wind and blue skies. Everyone in the hut was anxiously getting after it, so the first quarter of the tour out the back was a bit of a busy highway. But groups splintered in different directions soon enough and we were alone on the glacier up to the pass that leads to the Wiesbadener hut. While there is a lot of snow filling crevasses right now, we did have a member of our group who has fallen in crevasses before–broken snow bridges where others were able to cross. So we put him in front and roped up for the glaciated climb up. There is only mandatory glacier crossing the last quarter of the climb up to the col. We made it without incident. With all the fresh snow the day before, the ski down to the Wiesbadener hut was glorious.

With more bad weather pushing in that afternoon, we decided to have a big lunch at the hut and just stay put, enjoying the views, the beers, and the showers. The Wiesbadener had the largest showers and there were no lines, despite the hut being quite busy as it was a Friday afternoon. The hut is more rustic than the Jamtal or the Hiedelberger, but we preferred it the most as it was cozy and the staff were hilarious and so friendly. The people really do make an experience. The Wiesdbadener sits at the base of the highest mountain in the regions, the Piz Buin. The views were stunning at that hut. I mean, they were, of course, incredible everywhere because it’s the Austrian Alps, but from this hut, with that high craggy peak and its glaciers on the flanks and nearby ridges, it was a lovely afternoon of soaking it all in.

There is a road that leads down to the village from the Wiesbadener (this was the case at all three huts–which is comforting to know if you need to get down). But one valley over is a much nicer ski down–actual powder turns instead of just wedging down a road cut. Our last day ended up being pretty big as you have to do a climb up to get to this other valley, do the ski down to Silvretta Strasse, and then do several kilometers of skating the road down to the town of Wirl. The road plows stop at Wirl for the winter. When we arrived in Wirl it was a bit of a shock to be around cars and a lot of people again. We hopped the free ski bus down to the next town, Galtür, where we’d left the van, and where we spent a leisurely hour changing into shoes and drinking a celebratory beer.

I can’t think how this tour could have been any better as our first multi-day multi-hut experience on our own. Maybe we could have felt a bit more confident about being comfortable with some of the short peak summits. We didn’t try any additional climbing though our group was certainly capable. We will go back to the region for more weekends and start hitting peaks from there. This whole adventure was a great way for us to try out our skills and get more comfortable navigating on our own in the Alps.

Next year….Dolomites???