By Lily Krass
“I think that was our bus,” Max said, looking across the street to the train station.
Two minutes after the hour, we watched the 9 a.m. bus take off for the neighboring town.
Our hustle through the Altstadt (old town) with skis and heavy packs on our backs was in vain. But it didn’t matter. As we settled down on the sidewalk to wait for the next bus, I peered into the large paper bag bursting with pastries from the colorful bakery across the street. That chocolatey treat never stood a chance.
Ski buses are free and relatively frequent in Innsbruck. 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 obliged. He drove us through a few picturesque and snow-capped villages. Twenty minutes later we were skinning up the valley on our way to the Westfalenhaus. How’s that for a transfer?
Close but Far
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 from Innsbruck, but there’s no evidence of the lively, cultural hub we left. It takes but a few minutes up the valley to feel the warm, familiar embrace of quiet, snowy mountains. Towering peaks loom over the hut on all sides. Steep, narrow couloirs are sprinkled into each slope.
The ascent to the hut is pretty mellow—about 2,100 feet over three miles along the well-marked Winterweg (winter trail). We gawked at the chutes that flanked us on both sides as we skinned toward 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. His warm, weathered smile 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 local staff who live at the hut for weeks at a time.
We happily relaxed as dark clouds closed in on the hut. They swept the sparkling peaks out of sight for the rest of the afternoon.
Going Up to Go Down
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 Westfalenhaus stayed clear 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 arrived. We skied right out the door to the bottom of the line in less than five minutes—imagine if all approaches were this easy?—and bootpacked straight up the gut.
It was only after our gung-ho climb that we learned something about European backcountry skiers: They hate bootpacking. They’ll do about anything to avoid it. Skiing a line a few days later that I nicknamed “Kick Turn City,” we followed a skintrack up a 30-foot wide couloir that kick-turned more than 100 times up the steep face.
For the latter part of our trip, temps hovered right around freezing and we 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. We linked the soft, flowy turns that are good wherever you are in the world.
There’s something magically irreplaceable about a well-earned descent. We gazed back up at our line with satisfied smiles stretching 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. 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 return to ski one day.
Plan Your Trip
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 luxurious four-course dinner.
For more international ski adventuring, read about how Japan lives up to the hype.
