World Hotels - Walking Austria's Alps: Hut to Hut 2nd Edition

This book deals with a mountain world that exists above the picturesque towns, the beautiful lakes, and the majestic valleys of Austria. For the most part, it must be reached by foot. To those who are in reasonably good shape and can rough it a little, though, this book provides the insight to partake of that Alpine world in all its glory.

Having visited Austria on several occasions and ridden by cable car near the tops of mountains such as the Kitzbuehler Horn and Grossglockner, I have glimpsed from up there the pale blue-white mountain peaks that lead off almost endlessly to the distant horizon. But to have the opportunity to walk for days in those mountains, spending the nights in mountain lodges built just for hikers, that would be a fine experience.

These mountain huts are probably unfamiliar even to those who are fairly familiar with Austria. These huts, Mr. Hurdle explains, are not shacks, but they are professionally run, clean, and comfortable mountain lodges, where hikers sleep on long mattresses in communal areas for as many as twenty persons at a time without regard to sex or age. Sometimes food is available, as well as wine and beer. Hut guests have also been known to sing. Altogether, there are about 900 such places in the mountains of Germany and Austria.

The book describes eleven different tours of from four to eleven days. The hikes are mostly in the southern part of Austria where it borders with Italy. The hikes include tours in the Oeztaler Alpen, where the famous ice-age man, that Austrians call "Oetzi" was found, as well as a hike on Grossglocker, the highest mountain in Austria. There is a map for each tour, and a description including the appropriate hut in which to sleep for each stage.

This is an interesting book, but perhaps it loses a little by focusing almost entirely on the details of the hikes. The general reader might hope for a slightly broader context that included a little more detail about the towns or areas near the starting or ending points of some of the tours. It is somewhat difficult, even for one familiar with Austria, to get ones bearings in terms of the familiar towns and highways of the country. One other shortcoming in this book is that the pictures are all in black and white. Color would have enormously increased the degree to which the beauty of the mountains is conveyed.

On the whole, the book sparked my interest, and I hope, before long, to walk in the beauty of some of those high remote places.