Ski touring around Innsbruck – an urban mountain experience

Our mountain guide Tobi expertly kicks his ski boots into the snow to improve his footing. We follow him carefully along the breezy ridge with skis on our backpacks. To our left, the ridge descends to the snow-covered Hafelekar, which will soon lead us into the wild landscape of the Karwendel mountain range. But when we look to the right, we can see the roofs and streets of Innsbruck over 1,500 metres below.

It’s day three of our week of touring around the Tyrolean capital and this passage along the ridge is almost symbolic of the whole trip. There’s probably no other major city in the Alps where you can go from urban life to mountain adventures as quickly as you can here in Innsbruck. There are more than ten ski resorts within an hour of the city, and countless ski tours outside the mountain railway areas. The main Alpine ridge and the Brenner Pass are also virtually around the corner.

On a ski tour just outside the city

For five days, we’ll explore this unusual mixed urban/Alpine experience. We being Jessi, Swinde, Micha and Ruedi from Transa, plus our mountain guide Tobi from Höhenfieber mountaineering school, and me – from the 4-Seasons editorial team. This isn’t the usual ski touring week which starts off from a mountain cabin in the morning. Instead we fuel up for the day ahead at the breakfast buffet in our design hotel. Afterwards we take the environmentally friendly route by bus and train to our starting points for the day. It’s incredibly easy to use sustainable public transport on a ski tour around Innsbruck.

This is something we took advantage of in getting to this pioneering tour in the first place, with Arlberg as a staging post. It takes less than 2.5 hours by train from Zurich to St. Anton. And the ski resort, with its legendary off-piste runs, is on the route to Innsbruck. The Rendlbahn shortcuts our ascent before we leave the pistes behind and, after a short descent, attach our climbing skins to our skis. Even in one of the most popular freeride areas, we soon escape the crowds after climbing just a few extra metres towards the Hochkarspitze (2,836 m above sea level). After a couple of nice gullies and good turns in soft snow, we’re back at the railway station and soon travelling in comfort on the train toward Innsbruck.

Starting off with an easy ski tour

On day two, we use Innsbruck’s local family ski area Axamer Lizum as our starting point. The ski bus takes us from the main train station to the lifts below the striking Kalkkögel rock formation in just 50 minutes. In 1976, a large number of the skiing competitions in the Innsbruck Olympic Games took place on the pistes here. Heini Hemmi from Churwalden won gold in the giant slalom.

The old funicular railway, which takes us the first few metres up to the summit station at Hoadl, dates back to this time. From there, we leave the hustle and bustle behind us and cross beneath the Kalkkögel toward the south-west into open terrain. White, gentle slopes lie ahead of us. From here, you have several options; you could even set off from on the ‘Sellrain Express’, a multi-day ski crossing in the direction of Sellrain and Kühtai.

However, we decide to avoid the big names and trust our mountain guide Tobi, who heads for an inconspicuous ridge. In fact, there’s still plenty of untracked terrain here and we make three major descents over the course of the day. Nevertheless, by the evening we’ll only have covered a relaxed 800 metres of ascent. Swinde, sales advisor at the Transa Zurich Europaallee branch, is impressed: ‘I like the area, the rock towers of the Kalkkögel remind me a little of the Dolomites. But I’m even more surprised by the snow; even after two weeks without fresh snow we’ve had really good conditions here.’

Finding areas of pristine snow around Innsbruck such a long time after the last snowfall really calls for a certain flair. The local ski scene knows where the best spots are and makes use of them. There are many freeride and ski touring enthusiasts among the city’s students in particular – lecture halls at Innsbruck University are known to empty when there’s a fresh covering of snow.

Back on the ridge

And now back to the ridge high over the rooftops of Innsbruck. It takes just half an hour to get from the city to this spot with its truly unique view. From the city centre, you take a funicular railway and then a gondola up to the Nordkette mountain chain at an altitude of 2,256 metres.

Here we find a real Innsbruck classic: the Kleine Karwendel crossing from Hafelekar to Halltal. It’s a series of several high valleys and crossings until you finally descend into the Innsbruck suburb of Absam. On our particular route, we climb up again after the first 300 metres of descent into the Hafelekar. We may be just a few kilometres from the bustling valley along the Inn, but shielded by the peaks of the Nordkette, we’re in our very own kingdom. We pass through a patch of mountain pines into the large Mandlkar basin. The hairpin bends up to the pass of the same name are sharp and Tobi advises us to use crampons on the ascent due to the hard snow.

Once at the top, we catch another glimpse of the valley before skiing down a south-east slope half covered with firn and finally plunging back into the tranquillity of the Karwendel. Tobi manages to find a hollow with soft, pristine snow where the firn slowly threatens to turn into annoying crusted snow. Finally, we head uphill again. The last big ascent of the day takes us to Stempeljoch. A long break on a sheltered bench in the sun offers the perfect opportunity to savour our wild surroundings once again. Thanks to the excellent gondola support, we’ve only had to climb up around 700 metres on foot – and in return we get over 2,200 metres of altitude difference on the descents.

That’s not enough for Micha today. The sales consultant from the Transa Basel branch climbs around 150,000 metres a year on touring skis and his racing bike. So the Kleine Stempeljochspitze, with an additional 300 metres in altitude, is a nice treat for him at the end. The rest of us are happy to stay behind while he scales the summit. When Micha’s back, we head down into the Halltal valley to catch the bus that will take us back to the city.

From touring skis to city night life

In the evenings, we explore life in the metropolis on the River Inn. There are plenty of bars and restaurants in the vicinity of the hotel. The Old Town with the famous Golden Roof, which was built by Emperor Maximilian I in around 1500 AD, is also nearby. The golden landmark probably draws more visitors to Innsbruck than the ski fields – if they only knew what they’re missing!

Our fourth day takes us to Kühtai. The 2,000-metre pass and ski area is located to the west of Innsbruck. We ski the slopes of the Pirchkogel. On the south side, the mountain’s pistes are close to the lifts and often busy. But at the summit, we leave the usual route and head northwards. Thanks to the perfect skiing terrain and soft snow, we’re happy to overlook the fact we’ll have to go back over the mountain again on the way home. Fortunately, we don’t have to climb all the way up again and can cheat a little by going over a lower ridge to the nearest bus stop. This is yet another unbeatable advantage of public transport: each of our tours this week ends at a different point than where we started. This means we always get the perfect balance of the easiest ascent and the best descent.

After a final tour up the Serles, a striking rock pyramid south of Innsbruck with perfect firn slopes, we take the train back to Zurich. Everyone agrees that if there were more cities with such varied mountain tours options, we could be persuaded to take a ‘city break’ more often.