Originally published: Powder7 Ski Blog
“I think that was our bus,” Max said, looking across the street to the train station.
It was two minutes after the hour as we watched the 9 a.m. bus take off for the neighboring town.
After hustling through the Altstadt (old town) with skis and heavy packs on our back, we settled down on the sidewalk to wait for the next one. I peered into the large paper bag bursting with pastries from the colorful bakery across the street and selected an especially chocolatey treat as we waited for the next bus to arrive.
Ski buses are free in Innsbruck, Austria, and an hour later we were on our way to Gries, where we’d hopefully get a ride up the valley to our trailhead in Lüsens.
A very talkative Austrian cab driver gave us a lift through a few picturesque, snow-capped villages, and 20 minutes later we were skinning up the valley on our way to the Westfalenhaus.
The Westfalenhaus, an Alpine Club hut, sits at 7,457 feet, right smack in the middle of a breathtaking valley in the Stubai Alps. The trailhead is only about an hour’s drive from Innsbruck, but there’s not an ounce of evidence of the lively, cultural hub we left. It takes but a few minutes up the valley to feel the warm, familiar embrace of the quiet, snowy mountains surrounding us. Towering peaks loom over the hut on all sides, with steep and narrow couloirs sprinkled into each slope.
The walk in is pretty mellow, about 2,100 feet over three miles along the well-marked Winterweg (winter trail). We gawked at some of the chutes that flanked us on both sides as we skinned towards the cozy shelter in the clouds above.
The hut keeper, Rinaldo, a middle-aged Austrian man with a boyish and good-natured disposition, greeted us with a warm, weathered smile. His face told stories of a lifetime in the mountains. A few minutes later we had swapped ski boots for slippers and were enjoying a large Kaiserschmarrn—a delicious, pancake-like dessert that everyone should experience at least a dozen times—in the cozy dining room.
A hut trip in the States usually involves carrying in all your food, packing out your trash and going through your morning routine in a chilly wooden outhouse. The Alps are a different story. In Europe, a hut trip carries with it the assumption of baked goods, four-course meals, and beer on tap, served by the local staff who live at the hut for weeks at a time.
We happily relaxed as dark clouds closed in on the hut, sweeping the sparkling peaks out of sight for the rest of the afternoon.
We woke to sunshine on our first morning and rushed out the door, knowing it wouldn’t last long. We wandered up the valley to explore the vast terrain above us. The expansiveness was staggering, and we got a few good glimpses of the Hoher Seblaskogel and the Langentaler Weißer Kogel, two aesthetic objectives with sustained, wide-open descents and totally unpronounceable names.
Visibility wasn’t great during our stay, so we were confined mostly to terrain close to the hut. Luckily the chutes right above the hut boasted great visibility thanks to the jagged, rocky walls enclosing them.
On our second day we started up a steep, 1,500-foot chute we’d been staring at since we walked in. We skied right out the door of the hut to the bottom of the line in less than five minutes—imagine if all approaches were this easy?—and bootpacked straight up the gut.
After a few days in Austria, we quickly learned that Europeans will do just about anything to avoid bootpacking. We skied a line a few days later that I like to call “Kick Turn City”, when we followed a skintrack up a 30-foot wide couloir that kicked over 100 turns into the steep face.
Temps for the last few days had been hovering right around freezing and we’d encountered an inconsistent wind slab and breakable crusts on quite a few lines. The snow was funky to say the least. But after a few strikeouts we found smooth, creamy powder on a chute above the hut.
There’s something magically irreplaceable about a well-earned descent and we gazed back up at our line with satisfied smiles stretched across our faces. We exchanged high fives, laughing like giddy 10-year-olds, and made a beeline back to the hut for some afternoon libations.
Radlers and the sweet smell of apple strudel greeted us upon our return. We clinked glasses as we settled back into the cozy shelter of the hut, gazing out the window at the endless amount of lines we’ll surely be back to ski one day.
Logistics
We flew into Malpensa and spent a solid day train-hopping and wrestling with our colossal ski bag getting to and from Innsbruck. Milan was by far the cheapest flight, but Munich is a much more convenient airport if you’re trying to get to Innsbruck.
Once you’re in Innsbruck it’s super easy to get around. Free buses leave every hour for half a dozen ski resorts and if you need to get somewhere more remote, cabs are quick and affordable. We stayed in the Old Town at Nepomuk’s, a comfortable and inexpensive backpacker hostel located right above Cafe Munding, Tirol’s oldest bakery.
The Westfalenhaus has a winter and summer season, with winter accommodations running from mid February to late April. It sleeps 60, although when we arrived on a Monday afternoon we almost had the place to ourselves. Half board costs 38 euros per night and includes a large breakfast buffet and a four-course dinner.
We brought a rope and crevasse gear but didn’t end up needing it since glaciers don’t pose much of a threat these days in the terrain close to the hut. If you plan to link up one of the neighboring huts there is a potential for glacier crossings so it’s a good idea to have with you.
