Guidebook to trekking the Zillertal Rucksack Route, which traverses the very best of the range located in the Austrian Tyrol spanning the Italy-Austria border. It links huts together along good tracks without having to cross glaciers, providing a continuous tour of around ten days. With opportunities to climb adjacent peaks.
Introduction
When to go
Getting there and back
Accommodation
The Zillertal valley
Mayrhofen
Taking children
Health and fitness
Emergencies and mountain safety
The Austrian Alpine Club
About huts
Maps and guidebooks
Alpine walking skills
Mountain guides
What to take
Using this guide
Zillertal Rucksack Route Hoehenweg
Zillertal South Tyrol Tour
Hut Directory
Appendix A Route summary tables
Appendix B Useful contacts
Appendix C German-English glossary
Appendix D Further reading
An engineer by profession, Allan Hartley has spent the majority of his working life overseas engaged on major construction projects. However throughout this time he has maintained his close links with Austria, which he discovered totally by accident in the early 1970s in respite from atrocious weather conditions in the higher mountains of the western Alps. He maintains that Austria and the Dolomites of neighbouring Italy remain one of mountaineering's best kept secrets with their heady mix of superb scenery, good huts and first-class food, and are areas better suited to the average mountaineer than the higher mountains to the west. In addition to Austria, Allan has climbed extensively throughout the Alps, together with East Africa and the Greater Ranges in Nepal and Pakistan, and lesser known Zagros mountains of Iran and, more recently, the Hajr mountains of the Arabian peninsula. Not surprisingly, the author is a long-term member of the Austrian Alpine Club. When not abroad, the author's home is on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.