Tyrol in Austria: 5 days, 5 Tyrolean glaciers and 1000 impressions
Five days of skiing on five glaciers in Tyrol in Austria. Sounds pretty exhausting and that’s exactly how it is. Beside of being extremely beautiful, insightful and breathtaking. Last week I went to the beautiful Austrian region of Tyrol and came back with a slight sunburn, a jammed finger and lots of deep impressions which will continue to affect me for a long time to come.
Finally back on the slope! Five days in the glacier ski area of Sölden and on the Kaunertal, Pitztal, Stubai and Hintertux glaciers in Tyrol in Austria. Well, that means much more than just sports in the great outdoors. It means well-groomed slopes as far as the eye can see. Where you don’t even want to decide if you should take the right or the left slope.
It means sparkling white ski runs, in which no board has drawn its lines. Where words such as powder and fresh snow are honey for the ears.
Skiing in Tyrol in Austria means thousands of different impressions leaving you with some unforgettable memories. In this very moment, for instance, when you feel the coldest wind blowing in your face and you start pulling your scarf far over your face.
Or the moment, you can hardly move your fingers and they start becoming light blue. The moment in that you realize that you have small pieces of ice in your beard.
Skiing at heights like these is also a bitter lesson of experience that ski underwear is urgently required, but does no longer help at minus 22 degrees Celsius.
Skiing on five different days on five different glaciers is also a daily up and down. From the top to the valley to the top to the valley… It means a lot of effort for each muscle of your body and comes with the experience that sometimes you feel your sore muscles later, than you might have thought. It’s also the experience that you’re never too old for juvenility and never too masculine for bruises.
Tyrol is all about indulging in a panoramic sea of 3,000 meter peaks, so overwhelming, so majestic that the word “stunning” in the advertising brochure suddenly doesn’t sound exaggerated anymore.
Tyrol in Austria, that’s all about impressive crevasses with huge ice stalactites, sparkling ice crystals and frozen waterfalls into which you can disappear as in strange worlds, deeper and deeper into the eternal ice and more and more cut off from the outside world.
Five days of skiing on glaciers also brings the experience that every day eventually has to come to an end and that you can still comfort yourself with the knowledge that there’s always tomorrow, with freshly groomed slopes, that call for getting conquered. And if you’re lucky, new snow will fall soft in the night.
But of course there are also relaxing moments. For example, the one in that you finally arrive at the valley station in the late afternoon, take off your ski boots and finally release your battered feet back into the wild.
There is also the great moment you step into the car and drive off, get out of one and into the next glacial valley, passing toll stations and sequestered wooden huts. And all this under a sky that changes its colors so lovingly detailed in the evenings, as if Monet himself would have come around for painting it to the canopy: from the brightest shades of blue and the most romantic pink to the deep crystal blue that only comes up where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness.
A winter holiday in Tyrol is full of amazing views that you may not even believe to be true. Views of enchanted glacial lakes so idyllic located in the valley, that one feels compelled every few meters to stop the car for capturing this very moment with the camera. After all, it will never come back. Lakes that are embedded in snow-covered fir forests so picturesque that they rush by like a giant wall mural.
It’s those moments where you can observe your thoughts as they wander in time with the serpentines, with music in your ears and a well-deserved ice-cold beer in your hand. It is these late-afternoon hours, which round the day off and whisper softly “come back soon”.
Then there’s a very different experience: namely that skiing and snowboarding makes you really hungry, but that in each cottage delicious meals are waiting for you, and with each dish comes the certainty that probably no other European nation can cook such hearty meals as the Austrians. It’s the cozy get-together in the evenings, which rounds off the day. With menus, where it already turns out to be particularly difficult to decide for a dish at all. And where after dinner some bitters and other traditional schnapps are really well deserved.
It is your own comfort to forget the time chatting, only to realize later, that you will soon have to get out of bed again. It is the second, in that you’re suddenly quite exhausted by the fresh mountain air and immediately fall asleep calmly, just like a little child.
And then there’s the most beautiful moment of all: the one you open your eyes the next morning, still tired from yesterdays achievements and quite awkward because your overworked muscles hurt.
The moment you slowly walk to the window and part the curtains, and in this second your suddenly wide-awake. Namely in exactly the moment when the first rays let the snow-white peaks far above you shine in the brightest light. And it suddenly seems you hear a voice from far, far away calling: “Come on! The mountain calls!”
Find out more about the ski area of Sölden in the post We love Sölden – an Anekdotique Travel Guide!
Note: I was kindly invited by Tirol Werbung to take part in this trip to Tyrol in Austria. Nevertheless, my readers can be sure that I always write independently and autonomously and judge only according to my personal taste.
Toll!
Tolle Bilder, begeisterte Eindrücke.
Ein Gefühl, dass aus dem Sessel reißt und “Los, ich will auch!” ruft, obwohl ich zugebe, dass ich oft dachte, puhhh müssen die am Ende k.o. sein.
Ich habe Euch in diesen Tagen schon gern auf Twitter verfolgt. Jetzt freue ich mich sehr auf Bilder hier.
Danke für’s mirtnehmen!
Hey dankeschön! Es war aber auch jeden Tag genau dieses Gefühl. Jeden Tag von Neuem. Wobei einem irgendwann der Körper gesagt hat, dass jetzt auch mal gut ist 🙂
MEGA. Allein schon die Bilder. Sehr schön. Da muss man einfach Lust auf Berge, Schnee und Ski fahren bekommen.
Hey Steffi, danke, das freut mich zu hören. Dann hat die Dosis Tirol ja volle Wirkung gezeigt!
Lieber Clemens, vielen Dank für diesen wirklich tollen Bericht. Wir haben dieses Stimmungsbild, welches du hier vermittelst, 5 Tage lang vom Büro aus mitverfolgen dürfen, wenn wir nicht gerade mit euch unterwegs waren.
Es hat einfach viel Spaß gemacht, euch die 5 Tiroler Gletscher erobern zu lassen <3
lg Mela
Ich gebe zu, Skifahren ist so gar nichts für mich, dafür hab ich mir die ganzen tollen Bilder angeguckt. 😉 Der SCHNEE!!! Und die Gletscherspalten!! Awww!
Ich freu mich auf den Winter. Bitte jetzt sofort. 😉
Hey Inka, na dann freu ich mich, dass ich dich trotzdem ein Stück weit mitnehmen konnte! Ist der Winter bei dir etwa noch nicht angekommen? Also ich frier hier in Hamburg für zwei.
Danke für diese wunderschönen Worte Clemens! Da kann man ja gar nicht anders, als unseren Winter zu lieben :). Viele Grüße aus Tirol!
Danke Eva! Freut mich, dass dir der Artikel gefällt. Liebe Grüße zurück aus Hamburg!
Einfach toll! Kaum zurück von meinem letzten Tirol-Trip ins Tannheimer Tal juckt es mich beim Lesen gleich schon wieder in den Knien – ich finde die Gletscherwelt einfach total faszinierend und hoffe, ich kann da eines Tages auch mal Skifahren! 😀 Und wenn’s mit Hilfe von 10 langen Unterhosen übereinander, 5 Tiroler Gröstl und Enzianschnäpsen und nem Höllen-Muskelkater ist!!
Susi, du sprichst mir aus der Seele. Bin dabei 🙂
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