High Adventure in the Iceman’s Alps
by Mark Sissons
Soaking up the natural wonders of Austria’s Ötztal Valley
“Go ahead and jump!” shouts burly guide Klaus Seelos above the roar of the waterfall.
“But don’t forget to wrap your arms around you before hitting the water or you might dislocate a shoulder,” he adds as I contemplate the 12-meter plunge into the foaming glacier water pool. Soaking wet in my neoprene wetsuit, I tenuously cling to a slippery, narrow rock shelf beside a thundering torrent of icy water spouting from the side of the gorge.
Then I take a leap of faith into the abyss.
I’m canyoning, and one of the best places to try it is the Ötztal, a spectacular 65-kilometer long valley southwest of Innsbruck in the state of Tyrol in Austria’s Eastern Alps. Each summer, thrill seekers from all over Europe to this land of rugged 3000 metre high mountains, densely wooded valleys, shimmering glaciers and quaint alpine villages. Equipped with ropes, climbing harnesses, helmets and generous doses of chutzpa, they jump, swim, slide and abseil down steep mountain gorges.
“The Ötztal is the most popular place in Austria for adventure sports like canyoning, rafting, biking, hiking and climbing,” explains Seelos later over lunch at Feel Free, the adventure sports company that employs him. “It’s the best place to come because every sport is so accessible within a 50 kilometre radius,” he adds.
There is no shortage of outdoor adventures here in the valley that lent its name to ‘Otzi the Iceman’, the 5400-year-old Stone Age hunter whose remarkably well-preserved body was discovered frozen in the ice of a nearby glacier by German hikers in 1991.
The remains of Europe’s oldest natural human mummy are now displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, northern Italy. But visitors to the Ötztal Valley can visit a fascinating open-air museum near the village of Umhausen called Otzi Dorf. It recreates Otzi’s Neolithic world, including a traditional prehistoric thatched hut and a garden with herbs and paddocks for the animals.
Another fascinating window into the Ötztal Valley’s past is located high up along the so-called Knappensteig Miner’s Trail, where I hike the next morning with mountain guide Franz Gstrein, who has been traversing these trails for nearly 50 years, and whose grandfather wrote many naturalist books about the region.
During our half-day trek, which begins with a gondola ride to the top of a popular local ski area, Gstrein leads me on a meandering route through the high alpine landscape of the primeval Wörgetal Valley, past lovely stands of Swiss pine. Today, the only other travellers we encounter are chamois, marmots, mountain jays and the occasional mountain goat, peering curiously down at us from steep mountain ledges.
We’re following the tracks of miners who used this route over 450 years ago to transport the chalcopyrite, pyrite and galena they dug out of these mountains. Our destination is a small museum and watermill at the site of the former mine, where a village once stood in the mid 1600s. In this timeless valley, rich in unspoilt nature and age-old rural traditions, it’s not hard to imagine what life must have been like nearly half a millennium ago, since so little has fundamentally changed.
While the past permeates the high alpine trails of the Ötztal Valley, science fiction comes to mind upon my first close encounter with the Aqua Dome, a huge space age 2000 square metre spa complex opened in 2004 on the outskirts of the charming resort village of Längenfeld.
The Aqua Dome’s three giant flying saucer-like outdoor thermal pools face the base of Längenfeld’s impressive glacier. Behind them, the enormous enclosed central dome, designed by artist Peter Paul Tscheikner, contains more massive indoor whirlpools and massage pools filled with revitalizing mineral waters that have bubbled from a depth of 1,800 metres.
“This is the only real spa in the entire Tirol region,“ explains PR manager Kathrin Wolf over lunch in the Aqua Dome ‘s cafeteria. “It’s really special because of the breathtaking nature surrounding you. Most spas don’t offer that, “ she adds.
Most spas also don’t offer anything on the scale of Aqua Dome’s Gletscherglühen sauna and steam bath complex. You can melt away your troubles and rid your body of toxins in the steam dome, take an herb or brine vaporizing steam bath, retreat to a sauna made of wood, stone and glass that resembles the middle of a canyon, or sweat it out in a traditional Finnish sauna with several tiers of wooden benches.
As is the custom with public saunas in much of Europe, Gletscherglühen is clothing optional, which means that its rejuvenating combination of blazing heat, freezing temperatures, fragrant steam and icy rain is not for the bashful.
An hour later, bathed in the soft light of another sunset over Austria’s gorgeous Tyrolean Alps, I let the warm brine water jets of the Aqua Dome’s outdoor whirlpool massage away the aches and strains of my canyoning and hiking adventures. Out here, surrounded by the eternal natural beauty of the Ötztal Valley, space-age architecture blends seamlessly with a traditional lifestyle fundamentally unchanged for generations. Otzi the Iceman would likely still feel right at home.
IF YOU GO Austria Airlines offers daily flights to Vienna from several US and Canadian cities. For more information about the Oetzal Valley’s wide range of year-round outdoor adventure, visit www.oetztal.com.
The only Hot Springs Spa in West Austria, the huge Aqua Dome public spa on the outskirts of Längenfeld offers a glass-domed swimming pool, whirlpools, steam rooms and an outdoor plunge pool. There is an attached 4+ star wellness hotel.
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