Galtür had been cut off for days when Gerhard Walter, then managing director of the local tourist board, went to his office on February 23, 1999. He wasn’t worried. Heavy snowfall was nothing new for the southwest Tyrol village. For its 750 residents and 3,000 holidaymakers, the snowfall meant Galtür had reverted to its older self: a cosy self-contained world at the head of the Paznaun valley.
At 4pm Walter heard a sound “like someone throwing sand and snow at the windows. Then there was a lot of pressure. Then it went dark — like night.”
About 300,000 tonnes of snow had thundered off Grieskogel mountain on the village’s north side at speeds in excess of 200mph. Eyewitnesses reported seeing cars tossed by a wall of snow 500m wide before the avalanche slammed into the village a few hundred metres from Walter’s office, splintering 11 houses, shattering two hotels.
The disaster that struck Galtür 25 years ago was not just the worst in an exceptionally dangerous season throughout the Alps — the result of a freak coalescence of weather events over months — it was the single most deadly in Austria for half a century. Six villagers and 25 holidaymakers died.
“We never thought anything could happen here,” says the mayor, Hermann Hubert. Wearing a grey loden waistcoat with an embroidered collar, he sits in the panelled restaurant of his hotel, Rössle. An 18th-century crucifix hangs on a wall. “The village centre was designated a green zone [considered avalanche-safe, where building is allowed without reinforcements and protection]. We thought it was safe.”
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The story did not end with the tragedy, however. With the resilience only an Alpine community can muster, Galtür spent the following summer erecting steel barriers across high slopes. Massive granite avalanche dams were built for protection; houses and hotels reappeared. “The success of our village is the nature and tourism,” Hubert says, “but also the community spirit. It’s a thing of pride.”
The longest avalanche dam in Europe — 344m long, 19m high in places — forms the back wall of the Alpinarium in central Galtür (exhibition entry £9; alpinarium.at). It’s a memorial to the disaster as much as a museum of mountain culture, where a moving documentary is screened on loop. Go through a top-floor café, past a kids’ climbing wall (the bouldering around Galtür is excellent) and a platform cantilevers out over the dam’s goliathan blocks. Ahead is Grieskogel, a near-sheer 900m wall of rock. Beneath it a woman pulls a child on a sledge.
Galtür today is arguably the safest ski resort in Austria, yet few Brits have heard of the place. Last winter 1,595 of us visited, compared with 40,874 Germans and 6,611 Dutch. If one reason was the absence of large hotels favoured by tour operators, another was Ischgl. Austria’s second-largest ski resort, six miles down the road, is bigger, brasher, longer in pistes and louder in après ski. As its former marketing slogan ran: “Relax. If you can …”
Isn’t relaxing half the point of a holiday though? I expect most of Galtür’s visitors visit Ischgl at some point — its 145 miles of pistes are included in your ski pass. I bet they’re relieved to return to the smaller village.
In a way Galtür is the anti-Ischgl. Instead of flashy hotels, it has small family-owned jobs around a pretty red-spired church. I’m in the four-star Hotel Fluchthorn; quietly smart, woody, where the receptionist wears lederhosen. In place of raucous après ski disco bars it has Weiberhimml, the sort of cabin you usually see on cuckoo clocks. And where Ischgl welcomes Bon Jovi for concerts, Galtür has families. We’re lucky, one villager tells me: “We have no royals and no celebrities.” Tuesday nights involves a jolly event where people attempt to ski using barrel staves as skis.
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In short, Galtür is low on glitz, big on charm. Those in the know keep shtoom and keep returning. Last year an annual ranking of 50 Austrian ski destinations rated it in the top three for families, value for money and piste quality.
The pistes are the stars of Galtür. Or rather the mountains are. Gathered at the valley’s head are the sort of peaks a child might draw; sharp and pyramidal, like miniature Matterhorns.
As we board the gondola — no waiting in a queue, incidentally; another bonus of being overlooked — my instructor and guide, Christoph Pfeifer, enthuses about his backyard: 27 miles of pistes, mostly reds for intermediate skiers, with a few blacks swooping down Ballunspitze and good off-piste. Clever zoning separates tots from snowboarders busting airs, and backcountry heroes from hikers. Watch me, Pfeifer advises, as I slalom awkwardly across uncrowded powder.
I would, Christoph, honestly; goodness knows my skiing needs help. But it’s too beautiful. Galtür below is a cosy nest of white roofs and smoking chimneys cupped in the valley. The surrounding mountains gleam like mother of pearl. Frankly, I’d happily skip the skiing for a deckchair in the piste’s chill-out area.
I said earlier that Galtür had no celebrity endorsements. That’s not quite true. Ernest Hemingway came in 1925 during an extended stay in the Silvretta Alps. Heavily bearded, tanned the colour of ebony, he spent his time skiing, playing poker and drinking. Villagers knew him as “the Black Kirsch-drinking Christ”. On a spring morning, when “the sun melted the snow from our skis”, he recorded a yarn about a peasant and his dead wife. Snowed in over winter, he’d stored her corpse in the shed and hung an oil lamp in her mouth while chopping wood.
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With Pfeifer and his pal, Hermann Lorenz, I take a new snowshoe route. In summer these mountains provide much-loved hiking trails. Now we’re alone, clomping through deep unblemished snow. An Alpine ibex watches us from a knuckle of rock. Snowflakes drift in silence. It’s hard to believe skiers are whooping down pistes nearby. I imagine this is how Hemingway understood these mountains; as somewhere wild and still, as a landscape to unclutter your mind.
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Lorenz pulls out glasses and pours schnapps distilled from the roots of yellow gentian. Collection was banned in 1990 when the mountain flower grew scarce, so villagers appealed to Unesco’s cultural heritage people. They won. Today collection permits are decided by tombola. On September 8 Galtür’s holy day, 13 lucky winners are permitted to harvest up to 100kg — enough for six litres of hooch.
It’s a drink you share only with very good friends, Lorenz says, then spoils it rather by admitting he grows a small field of the stuff for cosmetics. It tastes bitter, herby. Villagers swear by it as a cure-all.
Grieskogel rises ahead. I wonder how they now see it. “It’s just a mountain,” Pfeifer says with a shrug. “For my grandfather and father, avalanches were a part of life. In Galtür we are mountain people. We carry on.”
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The next day I’m with Tobi Pfeifer, Christoph’s nephew, who is an instructor and a mountain guide like Christoph, and his father and grandfather before him; thus mountain culture passes down the generations. The best cross-country skiing in Tyrol extends around Galtür, snaking for 50 miles through valleys to remote peaks. An altitude of 1,600m can permit skiing until late April, even May. Tobi goes sometimes to clear his head. “I go into woods and it’s so quiet. You can feel the nature.”
We glide along the valley in grooves like rails. If this scene were your first impression of Galtür it would be a fair summation. Chalets with horned ibex skulls above doors. A crucifix on a sagging barn. Snow-dusted pines on steep slopes. Corkscrew peaks ahead. We climb a low pass between Gorfenspitze and Ballunspitze to arrive at a narrow, snowy valley of extraordinary beauty. Keep going for three hours and a mountain Gasthof at Piz Buin serves lunch.
Beneath the snow ahead is a road. By June, the Silvretta High Alps Road will reopen and motorists will again take Tyrol’s most scenic drive. By my reckoning that gives you three months. Being cut off isn’t always a bad thing.
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James Stewart was a guest of the Galtür Tourist Board (galtuer.com). Seven nights’ B&B at Hotel Fluchthorn from £889pp (fluchthorn-galtuer.at). Six-day Silvretta ski pass £332pp (shop.galtuer.com). Seven nights’ B&B from £1,023pp, including flights (crystalski.co.uk)
Three more unsung Austrian ski resorts
1. Obergurgl and Hochgurgl
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Austrian ski resorts don’t come higher than Obergurgl and Hochgurgl in the Ötztal Alps: the former a mellow village at 1,929m; the latter its ski-in, ski-out sidekick at 2,148m. A smart call for early and late-season breaks then, with the fun of the futuristic Top Mountain Bar at 3,048m. Expect older, smart skiers who’ve kept quiet about the place for years. To them, I apologise.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £963pp, including flights (inghams.co.uk)
2. Alpbach
When this farming village near Kitzbühel hooked up with the Wildschönau ski area a decade ago it transformed an insanely beautiful so-so ski resort into a ski destination of dreams. The resultant Ski Juwel area is criminally underrated: low key, low cost, with good intermediate runs. The caveat? It’s low-lying at 975m, but snow cannons cover most pistes and Inneralpbach is close.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from £651pp, including flights (igulski.cm)
3. Hochpustertal
If you’re after space (and who on skis isn’t?), Sillian is for you. Its small modern resort is in Osttirol, the backwater of Austrian skiing, which is why its broad pistes are uncrowded verging on empty. It’s one of several resorts in the Hochpustertal, including fairytale pretty Obertilliach village and Strassen, home to the smart four-star Strasserwirt hotel. All in all, ski safari perfection, with excellent off-piste if you have a guide.
Details B&B doubles from £157 (strasserwirt.com). Fly to Innsbruck
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