Spring Alps Hut Tour Beta?

Howdy,

Hoping to head back to Austria next spring (2011) and visit my family near Vienna. Any recommendations for relatively mellow hut-to-hut tours in the Austrian Alps? Maybe about 5-7 days long? I'd certainly consider the French/Italian/Swiss Alps as well, just feeling nationalistic. Either posh or ghetto is fine, looking for some good, moderate ski terrain with minimal technical travel (roped glacier travel, ice falls, rock climbing, etc.) and would like to minimize the amount of gear I have to hump along. Any other ideas where I could look for further resources?

Cheers,
Erik

I did the Silvretta Traverse two years ago and I would highly recommend it. I think it fits the bill of what you are looking for: moderate days, not too technical, but still a fantastic traverse with lots of options to make it more interesting and to vary it. We brought glacier gear along, but ended up not using it.

The best books in English (side note, for all the lack of back country books in Washington, there are an incredible number of amazing books for the Alps, in the local languages) for European traverses are the Cicerone Alpine Ski Mountaineering Books. There is an eastern and western Alps version.

Like I did for the WA ski tour books, I have marked them out on a map: maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ms...172f91231079&t=p&z=7

The huts along the way range from posh to quaint. All of course have excellent beer.

Posh huts = Italy, Ghetto huts = France, expensive huts with large dormitories and loud snoring = Switzerland. Austrian huts are one small step below Italian in quality. Let the flame war begin?

Cicerone guidebook is excellent for a tick list of 5-7 day traverses. Many huts in Tirol along the present Austria/Italy border offer several tours without the need to traverse. Marmot Mountain Works in Bellevue sells the Cicerone books.

Check Martin Volken website for ideas and guided tours, also Cosley/Houston site. Go to www.wildsnow.com for Austrian day ski stories and dessert identification quizzes. Walter Pause "100 Best Ski Tours" book from the 60s (?) has lots of day trip ideas all across the alps, many of which are now served by lifts.

Ski Heil! Ein prosic!

Interesting - I have only very limited experience, basically just huts around a few different valleys in an out-of-the-way area in Switzerland (sort of between Zurich and Italy) that aren't covered in English language guides (and where Russ and I were the only native born Americans we met in 9 days of touring), but in any case we saw some of each category of hut that you describe, Silas. The beer, however, was way inferior to the wine, IMO. I did not like any of the Swiss malt-based pilsners that I found - only the wheat beers were tasty, whereas the wines were pretty OK.

In any case, I'm eager to give both Austria and Italy a shot, especially if they're that much of a cut above what we found on our fantastic trip, so thanks for the pointers!

Thanks for the help. Not sure yet if the crew I'll be traveling with will want to do the guided thang or not...might be a cush intro to the area. I'll check out the resources you mentioned.

Cheers!
-erik