Zillerthal
Zillerthal -1250m 50kms south of Innsbruck
Zillerthal is different from Seefeld as its south of Innsbruck. The Zillerthal valley is home to the river Ziller. In the flatish valley is the base town Zem am Ziller before climbing up to the higher villages.
From here you can cross into the Gerlos valley, or climb to all round year skiing on the Hintertux glacier which culminates at 3400m. So as you can imagine its busy, popular and quite expensive.
Our excursion went up but only to 1300m to the village of Lanersbach. Interestingly there used to be 2 villages, Vorlanersbach and Lanersbach seperated by fields where cows grazed and farmers grew hay for the winter. Then in the sixties skiing became popular, the area grew and the two villages became connected by chalets and hotels.
In 2004 the local authorities launched a project to rename the by now single village, and today its called Tux, and the valley Tuxerthal to distinguish probably commercially at least from Zillerthal of which it is part.
We stayed at the Backerei (bakery) Gasthaus which is actually managed by the 4-star hotel Bergfried next door. These are beautifully modernised and quite select establishments with hammam, sauna, swimming pools (outside and in), gastronomic restaurant and all mod cons.
We chose to dine next door at the hotel Jager, and we really recommend it for high quality good priced food for dinner and breakfast. The village is a delight to walk around though quiet there are numerous shops for clothing, hiking and biking, accessories, food, beverage and others.
We used Tux as base to hike in the mountains, and to travel over to Gerlos, the Krimml valley and Kitzbuhel.
Officially speaking Krimml and Kitzbuhel are in Salzburgland or Carinthia depending where you are. This section is bordered by all three zones Zillerthal, Carinthia and Salzburgland.
Apart from the pass to join the Krimml valley, Gerlos isn’t very interesting unless you ski and hike at altitude. As we pâssed through Gerlos, we go the distinct impression a lot of UK money has gone into its recent expansion, with British named pubs, hotels and restaurant dotted along the roadside.
Krimml is well known and an interesting site with its huge waterfall. It takes a few hours to reach the top and return, and the climb is quite steep, at least for us in our 70’s.
Kitzbuhel is renowned and famous at it was the first ski resort to host the Word ski cup in the sixtees. It has grown to become a rich, tidy, cosy skiing village that hosts bikers and hikers in the summer time too. Judging by the Astons, Betleys, Porsches, Ferraris, and other expensive cars in hotel car parks, this town is upper class, and we did find meals quite expensive. However its very clean, very nice architecure and beautifil mountain surroundings with tons of cable cars to go wlaking in higher gound.
Zillerthal and the little village of Tux is more our style, quiet and well equipped, we enjoyed opur time there.
