Above Prutz is the Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis ski area, named after the three villages up there. We get a free bus pass as part of the tourist tax deal and having spent a day up there two weeks ago, we plan a ‘big day’. Getting the 09:02 bus might not seem too much of a stretch but it’s really cold in the morning and we have to make a big effort to hit the button on the warm air heater. We pack clothes for walking at nearly 3,000m (didn’t need them) and food and plenty of water. It looks as though we are going for a week. This ski area is buzzing with visitors. It’s very modern with good quality cable cars and they are all running. The whole place is family friendly and that means toddlers as well as crazy bigger kids and parents with mountain bikes. There’s a huge number of tracks for the bikes to use to descend and the cable cars are designed for bikes to be taken in them. As a result it’s a busy weekend, helped by perfect weather. We have planned a ridge walk and we take the Schönjochbahn c...
Studying the maps to find a nice route into Austria meant looking for squiggles because squiggles means hairpins. Google maps wasn’t interested in the route I found on our detailed OsmAnd maps. We generally use Google maps as a check for traffic delays but it would not route us over the squiggles that I found. Timmelsjoch pass appeared to fit the bill though. It’s another high pass (2,509m), on the Italy-Austria border and driving from the south it’s very steep. This is clearly a less used pass. There were a few cars and bikers and one or two cyclists, impressing us as usual. At the top it was cold and had snowed in the last few hours. Unlike the popular passes, there’s very little at the top. There is a small exhibition about the construction of the road in recent times but the pass has been a route through the Alps for centuries , linking the Passeiertal and Ötztal valleys. There is one very nice small restaurant on the Austrian side of the top, with enticing apfel küchen and we were...