Crossing the Alps — Tiro­le­r­weg II Inns­bruck — Sterzing

As with our tours in the two pre­vious years, we were gene­ral­ly very satis­fied with the orga­niza­ti­on and exe­cu­ti­on of the tour, with some minor com­pro­mi­ses; the­r­e­fo­re “only” four stars. The fol­lo­wing comm­ents: We were not enti­re­ly hap­py with the rather detail­ed descrip­ti­on of the rou­te in the tour book pro­vi­ded by our part­ner com­pa­ny Best­sel­ler Rei­sen, which included pho­tos of the rou­te, espe­ci­al­ly becau­se you can’t hold the book in your hand all the time, at least if you use wal­king poles. In the end, howe­ver, this did­n’t bother us too much. The sign­pos­ting and mar­king of the trails was usual­ly — but not always — so relia­ble that you could mana­ge well wit­hout the details in the tour book. Some­ti­mes the descrip­ti­on of the rou­te could have been kept rela­tively short, for exam­p­le on the third day (Fulp­mes — Trins): from Fulp­mes fol­low the signs to Maria Wald­rast, then to the Och­sen­alm, then fol­low the signs to Blaser/Blaserhütte and final­ly downhill to Trins. The note in the tour book that 1.5 hours is pro­ba­b­ly not enough for the des­cent to Trins — accor­ding to the sign­posts — is cor­rect; 2 hours is rea­li­stic. On the fifth day (Trins — Obern­berg), the tour book is not up to date as far as the Tru­na hut is con­cer­ned; the hut is defi­ni­te­ly open! By the way: In any case, if you are plan­ning to spend the night in Gries — as we were — and the­re is a bus ride at the end of the tour, you should choo­se a dif­fe­rent des­cent, name­ly past the Kas­ten­bergalm to the end of the val­ley with the Wal­des­ruh inn, whe­re the bus starts; you can use any wai­ting time for the bus to stop off at the inn; for the sixth day, the tour book should be prai­sed for once becau­se of the refe­rence on p. 62.   Accor­ding to the tour book, on the seventh day (Gos­sen­sass — Ster­zing) you are sup­po­sed to take the chair­lift up to Lad­urns. But the chair­lift no lon­ger exists! Ins­tead, a new cable car is under con­s­truc­tion. Of cour­se, infor­ma­ti­on about this should have been included in the tour book. Befo­re the start of the stage, we had heard by chan­ce at Hotel Erna that the chair­lift no lon­ger exis­ted, so we were not unpre­pared when we arri­ved at the sup­po­sed val­ley sta­ti­on of the lift. As a result   All in all, the tour is stre­nuous due to the many meters of ascent, but you are reward­ed with many views. If you are not afraid to climb around 1000 meters of alti­tu­de every day for a week and des­cend the same amount of alti­tu­de again, you will mana­ge well (and can also go for a stre­nuous hike on the rest day abo­ve Trins/Steinach in the Nöss­lach­joch area. This is espe­ci­al­ly true if, as was the case with us, you have excel­lent hiking wea­ther day after day.a final side note: We had boo­ked an extra night in Ster­zing and used Satur­day to take the bus from Ster­zing to the Pfit­scher Tal val­ley to St. Jakob in order to repeat the final stage of our first Alpi­ne crossing (Tegern­see — Ster­zing) from 2015 for nost­al­gic reasons!