For our last day here, we took a trip to the Hintertux glacier.

From Hintertux village, a chain of gondolas can take you all the way up to the top, above the clouds. There is enough snow there for year-round skiing. It felt pretty bizarre to arrive in sandals and t-shirt (although we quickly added fleeces and jackets) and meet skiers and snowboarders.

We had no plans to do any skiing, but there were some snowy attractions for kids. They had fun sledding on inflated rubber tubes, but the snow kept getting into Adrian’s sandals.

Gondolas took us partway down, and all of a sudden we were back in summer. Then we walked the last bit down, from Sommerbergalm to Hintertux village.

This was a very picturesque walk, like most of them here – steep rocky mountains, winding paths with wide views, meadows dotted with fir and pine, lovely little brooks and waterfalls.


We do have mountains in Sweden and there are plenty of hiking paths among them, so one might wonder what the point is of travelling so far to hike in yet more mountains. But the Swedish mountains are very different from the Alps. The Scandes are old and worn-down. While they can look quite mountainous from afar, when you get closer, they usually aren’t that impressive. Whereas here in the Alps, it’s all steep, bare rocky walls and narrow valleys. The Alps are also much lusher.