UKH

Dear All,

All things going well with Covid, I am thinking of doing, with a friend, either the Zillertal Rucksack Route (Hoehenweg) or the Zillertal South Tyrol tour; both are described in the book 'Trekking in The Zillertal Alps' by Cicerone. We have some experience of such things from doing the Hoch Stubai Glacier route a few years back and the Haute Route too.

I'd be grateful for any advice of any kind and especially on the glacier aspects; of course, I appreciate it changes year to year. You can't have too much information--usually! Thank you for your time. 

There are no glaciers on the Höhenweg (and I don't think on the south Tyrol tour either, though not done it). Unless you do side-peaks as day excursions from the huts. Some of the high passes you cross each day might have snow, depending on the time of year. Later in the season it's not really an issue. The Höhenweg is a cracking round. We did have to break it in two, unfortunately, as we didn't book ahead, and got turned away at the Olperer hut, so probably worth booking the whole round.

I've done the Walkers Haute Route, Stubai Rucksack Route and the Zillertal Rucksack Route.

The Stubai and Zillertal ones were done with some 2 night stays at huts to do an off-route mountain.

They were both done at the beginning of September and I think the overall grade was about the same. One of the Zillertal days was longer than any of the Stubai days but not ridiculous.

For the Stubai we took axe & crampons, needed for some of our mountains. For the Zillertal we just took poles, sufficient for the mountains, although we would've checked first at the hut - but we were certainly ok for the trek.

Like the Stubai and unlike the Haute Route, once you climbed high at the beginning, you stayed high.

If you were happy with the Haute Route and Stubai, you'll find the Zillertal no worse - although obviously you can't guarantee the weather on any of them!

I still have my basic day-to-day plan showing the huts and the planned off-route mountains, so email me and I'll send it. 

Thank you. Did you do any of the extra peaks just off the route? If so, any to be recommended? Thank you for your time. 

We had planned to do a few such as the Olperer (still on our todo list), but the crampons I borrowed for the walk broke on the first one we did!

There are a few easy (non-snowy) ~3000m peaks you can pick up along the way, with a little scrambling in places: Ahornspitze (we did on Day 1, after walking to the first hut from the cable car and dropping bags off),  Hoher Riffler (done en-route),  Grinbergspitze (done on the last day before descending to the valley). The Grinbergspitze has 3 summits, which get progressively higher and more technical. My wife only did the first (~grade 1 scramble), I did the second (maybe grade 2 or 3), but wasn't sure about how much further to go and lacked a good description.

We also did the  Wollbachspitze - Punta di Valle, on which I broke the aforementioned crampons. This did involve hiking up the glacier, but was fairly straightforward. Nice views into Italy.