Walking holidays in Austria’s North Tyrol region

Claire Ouditt is extolling the virtues of Achensee. “It’s the perfect base. It’s close to Innsbruck, so it’s a short transfer, and the hotel is really great, with great food, a lovely spa. People love it.” Claire is the product manager at our specialist Austrian walking supplier, Exodus. She’s right: this lovely lake, which sits close to the German border, is indeed beautiful. It’s surprising to think that it was actually Exodus’ second choice for their North Tyrol hiking and winter walking holidays.

Exodus used to run their trip in a very remote area of the Tyrol, but the village had so few visitors that the local shop closed, and the mountain huts began to shut down. “We were one of the only operators in the area and there were no more buses, the chairlifts stopped,” Claire Ouditt, the product manager for Exodus’s Tyrolean holiday, explains. This, and a couple of retirements, meant they decided to move the trip:“We already have a skiing trip in Achensee because the whole area is very good for cross country skiing in the winter. We knew the area already and we had a great hotel. So our leaders did a bit of recce-ing in the summer to see if there was enough to do.

Whilst it’s sad to leave a fading area, it’s a reminder that good tourism, done well, can be a really important support to local infrastructure. Now embedded in their new home: a waterfront hotel in Achenkirch, Exodus walking trips continue to use public transport and work closely with businesses based in the area. “We use public transport, local produce and local restaurants. For our airport transfer we use a local company. We definitely try and make sure that we make an impact locally. It’s not always easy to see the benefit you, as a traveller, bring in Europe. But all of that matters.”

Centre-based walking in a small group is the way to go in the Tyrol. There are so many great hikes in each area that you don’t need to move from one spot to be constantly rewarded and challenged. Pick a trip that offers a choice of walks each day and you don’t all have to be the same fitness level to holiday together. “There are two grades – a moderate and hard walk for every day and there are routes to modify the walks if the weather is bad. There’s lots of choice. The big advantage of our trips is that you can switch grades through the week,” Claire explains.

In eight days you can spend a good five days going on walks, with a rest day in the middle of the week for sightseeing – or for actual rest (the Tyrol is famous for wellness, too, and spas abound). Expect to spend six to seven hours walking each day. You’ll walk in a group of no more than 20 people – normally there are between 10 and 14 hikers on small group holidays here.

Each evening, your guide will outline the next day’s walks. It helps that the summits of countless mountains peer over to you around the lake, your guide can simply point and say, ‘that one next’.

You’ll walk on unmade tracks that can sometimes get rocky as you go higher, but there’s very little scrambling involved. Thanks to the lifts, you’ll probably end up walking downhill for longer than you walk uphill. 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 mountain’s contour line – to get some lovely views without too many steep climbs.

Hiking here is a piece of cake. The walking can be steep, but once you get to a mountain hut, you can indulge in apple strudel and Viennese cakes, and special local dishes like Kaiserscharmm – a heap of shredded pancakes so large it’s best shared between two.