A Walk In Tyrol

By J. J. Brigg

Last year we were in the Graians, we had seen beforetime something of the Pennines, but none of us had been in the Eastern Alps. They are further from England, and the peaks are not so high or so impressive as are the Alps of Switzerland and Savoy, but they are pleasant places in which to spend a holiday. The Calais-Basle line and the so-called Paris-Vienna express brought us to Innsbruck, the beautiful and interesting capital of Tyrol. We spent a morning visiting the Court church and the great Tomb of Maximilian, with its exquisite marble reliefs and huge bronze statues-one of the most wonderful things in Europe, and left at noon after heavy rain for Jenbach. Leaving the train there we drove up the Zillerthal to Zell. The Zillerthal is a pleasant mountain valley, with neat and pretty villages of the Swiss type, but the Tyrolese are much fonder than the Swiss of adorning their houses with flowers both in gardens and in window boxes. The inn at Zell overhangs the river and makes an enjoyable place for a few days’ stay. The daughter of the house showed us the table cloth made of the yarn which she and her maidens spin during the winter: but, alas! they can buy a table cloth readymade cheaper than they can make it.

From Zell we started for Krimml at the head of the Pinzgau. The path led up a beautiful valley of alternate pine wood and meadow, with distant views of white villages and green church spires shining in the sun. The Austrian Alpine Clubs certainly look after their country well, and with signposts and daubs of red paint by the side of the path it requires a genius to go astray. The inns, too, and houses of refreshment occur with commendable frequency and regularity, and they are both good and cheap. After four hours’ walk we came to a place where a “cloud-burst” only a week before had completely swept away the track for some distance and filled the floor of the valley with débris, but already men were at work and had begun a new road. We were piloted past this place by a gamekeeper in grey and green, and it was interesting to note that his dog was a dachshund, not the heavy bandy-legged creature we see here in England, but a workmanlike little dog that looked ready for anything. Gerlos, where we stayed for lunch, is a scattered hamlet in a wide upland valley, with one or two decent inns. The pass from here into the Pinzgau is across wide-spreading alps, and if it had been clear I suppose we should have had a splendid view across to the Gross-Venediger. We were compensated by a sudden view down on to the waterfalls of Krimml, the finest in the Austrian Alps. In three leaps the water falls 1,400 feet-needless to say there is an hotel at the foot, one half way up, and a pavilion at the top.

Leaving Waltl’s Hotel next day under a brilliant morning sun we drove down to Rosenthal, opposite the mouth of the Ober-Sulzbachthal. A typical Tyrol valley this, and of it one’s memory is full of recollections of pine woods and clear rushing streams under beetling crags, round which the hawks were soaring, while one almost forgets the torture of new boots and the disappointment on finding that the chalet where one hoped for a modest meal is “out” of bread, to say nothing of the last steep climb up the rocks under a heavy load of luggage, and a deep conviction of the futility of mountaineering as an amusement. But “Good times and bad times and all times get over,” says Bewick, and by live o’clock we were happy in the comforts of the Kursinger Hut. The German-Austrian Alpine Club appears to divide the Alps into districts assigned to different sections of the club, and each section tries to make its district as comfortable as possible. Thus the Kursinger Hut falls to the Salzburg Section, and is a model of what a mountain hut should be. It is “bewirthschaftet,”/em> that is, run on the lines of an inn, by a couple of women. Good food can be had, all is clean, and charges are low, a great contrast to many of the huts where my readers have passed joyless nights.

The icefall of the Ober-Sulzbach glacier is just below the hut, and is known as the “Turkische Zeltstadt,” from some fancied resemblance to a barbaric encampment of white tents. Who says the Germans have no imagination?

After a comfortable night we left at 2.30 for the Gross-Venediger. An hour’s walk along a rocky path brought us to the glacier, and soon the morning star glittered over the ridge ahead of us, while as it faded the snow peaks reddened with the rising sun. The climb presents no difficulties and few features of interest, but the summit of the peak is an extreme example of a snow cornice. Several other parties were up, but it seemed to be the correct thing to avoid the last I0 or I5 feet of the mountain on account of the cornice. The view is different from those in the Pennine Alps, inasmuch as the snow peaks are arranged in groups – the Adamello, Ortler, Oetzthal, Stubaithal, Gross Glockner, with wide stretches of hills below the snow-line between them. To the south-east and south were many ranges of rocky peaks and the weird outlines of the Dolomites.

An easy descent brought us to the Prager Hut, after which we were to learn that the walking from one mountain to the next is the most toilsome part of the Tyrol climbs. A very steep path took us down past the icefall of the Schlatten Glacier into the level alley and to a hamlet (with an inn and the red and white flag of Tyrol) called by the euphonious name of Gschloss, after which a ten-mile tramp was sufficient to dry up any enthusiasm we might have had about the scenery. We were sincerely glad to come into the wide basin where Windisch-Matrei stands on its “river-fan” of fertile soil. By this time the clouds had hidden all the higher hills, and the half-light of evening brought out the greens and browns of the meadows and cornfields of the valley. Here, as elsewhere, we met only Austrians and Germans, but found them as courteous and agreeable as we could wish. Very few were the English names in the visitors’ books, but nowhere would they be more welcome. At Matrei we had a day of rain, and left the next day and crossed a grass pass-the Matréi-Kaiser Thorl -to Kals. The inn we stayed at is kept by an old  guide, who turns out on Sunday in the most startling Tyrolese dress, of which a black belt, embroidered with white quills, ornamented “shorts,” and openwork white stockings, leaving the knees bare, are prominent features. On Saturday evening and Sunday the whole countryside comes into the village to church -hard-faced women in quaint round black hats, and men in grey homespun trimmed with green. Kals is the starting-place for the Gross Glockner, but we had so much rain and snow that we had to give up the idea of climbing it and reaching Heiligenblut. On Sunday morning we left in the rain to walk down the valley to the main road at Huben. We bought excellent umbrellas, of dark blue cotton, with prismatic borders, from a hawker for half-a-crown, and by their means we arrived dry. A few hours in the “stellwagen” or diligence brought us to Lienz. I make no remarks about the views of the Gross Glockner, &c., from here, because it was too cloudy to see them. Lienz was very quiet that Sunday afternoon, and is probably not very thrilling at any time. The Pusterthal, along which the railway runs from here to Toblach, has some fine glimpses of Dolomites, but everything above a certain height was in cloud.

Toblach is a fashionable little watering-place (though it has no particular waters, I believe), nowadays very much “a la financiere. ” It came into note as one of the resting-places of the late Emperor Frederic in his gallant struggle for life, but is better known to English people as the gate of the Dolomites. A beautifully-made road runs from here through the Ampezzo Thal to Italy, and by this we drove to Cortina. The scenery has been so often described that I need not attempt it. We considered the approach through Landro and Schluderbach to Cortina finer than the scenery of Cortina itself; Cristallo and Popena, reflected in the shallow Durrensee, are specially to be noted. The inn at Landro is comfortable, but the sight of a hundred guests hard at work on “table d’hote” dinner at midday was a depressing spectacle -it seemed a wilful neglect of God’s sunshine. Mid- day dinner is still the custom in Austria, when they have table d’hote at all, and this is probably the reason why German tourists get away so early in the morning -they could not otherwise get much walking in before dinner. Whether due to English example or not, the number of German-speaking tourists one now meets is very extraordinary, and the number of hard-walking ladies especially so-they certainly do appreciate the beauties of their own land. The men mostly wear brown felt hats, while the Italians show their English sympathies by wearing white ones.

In the smaller inns throughout Austria meals are paid for strictly a la carte; on leaving you send for the waitress, and ransack the memories of yesternight to say whether the party had “einrnals” or “zweimals” of “Schnitzel“-that is cutlet, and how many pieces of bread. That you had “Schnitzel” is as certain as that you had ham and eggs when in Wharfedale. The whole of the waiting is often done by one active girl, while the landlord adorns the ceremony by his presence. They have recently changed the coinage, which is now fairly simple; a krone is about a franc and contains 100 heller, being half the old gulden. But as most people still reckon in
gulden, it is a safe rule to “double it and call it francs” when you hear a price quoted. Cortina is a pleasant, clean village in a wide, green valley. The first slopes of the hills are gentle, and the rocky Dolomite peaks with the strange names stand well  back in the landscape-Tofana, Pomagagnon, Cristallo, Sorapiss, Antelao, Croda da Lago, and particularly the Cinque Torre, which juts out of the green hill top like a much decayed tooth and not unlike an exaggerated Almes Cliff  ^[1] The village has thrown off the appearance of old worldliness that so much struck the earlier travellers, and has blossomed out into shops and afternoon tea places for its troops of visitors. A guide on a bicycle is a common sight, and I saw (and smelt also) , two motor cars go through during our short stay there. The Hotel Faloria on the hillside is “where the English stay,” and a very good place it is. We had to be content with rooms in a villa just below it, a quaint old last century place with strange frescoes and copper-plate engravings on the walls.

Our first idea had been to pick up a guide at Landro and go up the Kleine Zinne straight away, but this had fallen through, mainly because we could not find a guide, and we had to pick one up in Cortina – two, in fact, and they thought that number rather small for three climbers. One, Tobias Menardi, turned out well, and is a first-rate man. Of the other, someone remarked that if we had asked Whiteleys to provide us with a guide for a Dolomite he was about the sort of man we might have expected.

Next morning we set off from the hotel about 3.45 a.m. across the fields and up the road to Tre Croci, feeling much more like early mushroom gatherers than mountaineers. The inn at Tre Croci opened its eyelids sufficiently to provide some food, and we made for Cristallo. It is a mortal grind up the slopes and screes to the col between Cristallo and Popena, and after that a pleasant and easy rock climb to the summit, which is commodious and dry. The view is magnificent -but, of course, the distant prospect is very much like that from the Venediger, and the nearer Dolomite peaks lose a good deal of their striking effect by being seen from the level of their summits. We watched a party climbing Popena by the new, or “English,” way, and descended comfortably to a hot lunch at the Tre Croci Inn. Our guide was very energetic, and in place of a day off made us go up Sorapiss the following day. We walked from Tre Croci by a good path commanding lovely views over towards Misurina and the Sextenthal to the Pfalzgauer Hut – a perfect gem of a hut, with good clean spring mattress beds and a kindly matron to keep house. In front, a commanding view towards Misurina, and behind, the towering crags of Sorapiss and the green Sorapiss Lake. We thought that in the Dolomites there was to be no early rising, but from the Pfalzgauer Hut we were away at three o’clock, and climbed up scree and snow for two hours before we reached the rocks, while behind us the distant rock peaks stood purple before the light of a lovely sunrise. The climb is a series of chimneys and traverses, varied in two places by wire ropes studded with leaden balls, which certainly come in very useful, though I believe the climb could be done without them. Our guide, Tobias, enjoyed himself immensely awaiting the panting climber with a cheerful grin and inquiries if it were not a “schone kletterei” It was interesting to see how uneasy our guides seemed while they were in a little snow chimney. In a driving mist we reached the summit, and after reading with melancholy interest a note by the late O. G. Jones on his climb of the peak in a thunderstorm we descended by the easy way, which is truly described by Baedeker as “laborious.” On the way down to San Vito we called at the hut erected by the Venice section of the C.A.I. – a well-cared-for place, and so favourably situated that the caretaker is able to grow roses over the door and vegetables in the garden. Just below is the village of San Vito, where in orthodox Dolomite fashion we were in time for mid-day dinner and a carriage and pair back to Cortina.

The next day was, of course, a day of rest, which some of us spent in a long drive down to Pieve di Cadore – Titian’s birthplace; while in the evening we bought kletterschuhe for the morrow’s climb, and assisted at a magic lantern show, given in our villa by an enthusiastic lady climber.

The Croda da Lago climb next day combined every element of the enjoyment as distinct from the hard work of mountaineering -a walk up through the pines  “betwixt the dawn and the day,” while the moon and the morning star faded before the “strong beams of the uprisen east,”  an hour’s interesting climb on dry rocks  -a good view on a comfortable summit – a careful descent down another face of rocks -a bathe in a clear stream and a good feed at a mountain inn -then a stroll down into the village and afternoon tea with friends at the Cortina tuck shop. Our expectations of Dolomite delights were realised. Next day we left. For fairly competent climbers a list of Dolomite climbs is very much a question of money to engage good guides with, and as we had had a good sample of moderately difficult climbs we now arranged to see some more of the country by walking to Botzen. The first day we crossed the Giau Pass under the crags of Nuvalau and Croda da Lago. It is a beautiful walk, and gives wonderful views of Pelmo and Civetta. We called at Colli di Santa Lucia, where we looked into an old house that seems to have altered very little for the last two hundred years. One feature common to many old houses here is the kitchen fireplace, which is raised two feet from the floor, like an altar, and stands in the middle of a large square bay window, lighted on three sides, so that the family can sit round three sides of the hearth, or family altar, in a well-lighted corner. Well wrought andirons and fireirons stand across it and complete the picture. I present this as a suggestion to designers of golf pavilions, etc.

Caprile lies in a narrow valley, and is a quaint, dirty little place, with iron-grated windows to the older houses and the Lion of St. Mark on a column, as symbol of the old Venetian sovereignty. We were very comfortable at the Post Inn, and next morning drove down to see the Alleghe Lake – a fine instance of an “artificial” lake, having been formed by a landslip that happened about a hundred years ago. One would never suspect this, and it is a beautiful feature in the picture.  Caprile is in Italy, and we saw the mourning mottoes for the late King Humbert, and the proclamation of his successor. We left at noon to walk up to the Fedaja Alp, to climb the Marmolata next day, and had a delightful afternoon, the brilliant sunshine lighting up the grey rocks and the green valleys. The path goes through a gorge called the Gorge of Sottoguda – an enlarged edition of Gordale  Scar -and here, as elsewhere, the streams were clear and bright; even the glacier from the Marmolata brings down no mud. The chalet people were wending their way home after mass, and I am sorry to say that all the small children begged, but more from habit than necessity. Our second bathe that day we took in the tarn on the Fedaja pass, and we reached the inn there about 4 p.m. lt was rather crowded, and we were not sorry to start at 3.30 next morning for the Marmolata. We and our guide – who answered to the name of Nepomucino del Buos -soon overhauled the rest of the people (rather over 30) from our inn and another one, and reached the easy snow summit at 6.50. It is the highest Dolomite peak, and the view was very fine. The San Martino, Rosengarten, and Langkofel groups were new to us, and we were gratified with a glimpse of the Venetian lagoons. We were back at the inn by 10 o’clock, very easily, and sauntered down the valley to Penia and Campitello, in full view of the weird Funf-fingerspitze. The Albergo Al Mulino is very comfortable, and has tried to meet English views by starting a table d’hote dinner at 5 p.m. We left at 6.45, with a porter to carry the luggage. The way follows the torrent, first up a rocky valley, where the village  goatherd was leading out his flock for the day, then up a wide upland valley dotted with chalets and commanding a fine view of the Marmolata and the Sella Group. In front is a curious rock peak, whose name, Rosszahne, or horse-tooth, accurately describes its appearance. From an opening in the hills we had our last panoramic view over the Tyrol and Tauern Alps, and then descended into the Tierserthal. The path has been made through a very romantic gorge called the Barenloch, and then leads down a narrow valley to a little watering-place called Weisslahnbad, where we made two of a roomful of 30 German-speaking visitors busy on a solid midday dinner. The day invited to a siesta, but we wanted to be at Botzen, and as there was no carriage -even if the ‘ road had been fit for one -we had a steady two hours’ grind down the valley, past Tiers to Blumau, on the Brenner line, where, after cooling our heels for 50 minutes, we took train for the remaining five  miles to Botzen.

Botzen, with its arcaded streets, its cathedral, its open cellars full of apples, its market stalls hung with peaches, gourds, and figs, and above all its barrier horizon of jagged hills, is a pleasant picture; and for a simple pleasure a breakfast of rolls and coffee in the square outside the Black Griffin is not easily beaten. Unfortunately the morning clouded in and we had rain over the Brenner to Innsbruck. Being the Assumption all the shops were closed, except the cigar shops and ice cream stores, so we had another view of what someone profanely calls the “copper johnnies” at the Court Church, and picked our way through the glorified rockery known as the relief-map of Tyrol -really worth visiting after you have been in the country. At Innsbruck we left, as we had entered, the country of Tyrol.

If a man had only one season in a lifetime to give to the Alps, I don’t think I should say “Visit Tyrol.” It does not begin to compare with the Pennines, the Oberland, or Dauphiné, but no one will visit it without pleasure. To visit the great peaks of the central Alps you have to go through a great many villages that can only be described as “fly-blown,” but in Tyrol cleanliness is a fairly good second to a piety which is very conspicuous. The people are courteous, and you often hear the salutation “Gruss Gott!” A Scotchman we met expressed surprise that the peasants remarked as they passed him, “Great Scot!” He thought they were impressed. We found the alleged incivility to Englishmen a myth, and I only hope that Germans travelling here in England find as much civility as we experienced in their country. “Those that wish to have friends must show themselves friendly.”

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