Zillertal

Chosen for its convenience and mountains, I went to Zillertal with my mom for a week. The scenery was mostly mountains and a few waterfalls.

We stayed in Mayrhofen (which apparently is a big ski town during winter) for 7 nights, so I had a chance to do a lot of the hikes around the area. I will say though that due to the low frequency of buses and spread-out nature of the area, we didn’t go very far from Mayrhofen and mostly stayed within 30 mins on the bus.

Mayrhofen itself was quite lively with more people than I was expecting, and every evening seemed to draw people to restaurants with outdoor seating. Mornings would be busy as well, but I don’t know where people were going as most weren’t dressed in hiking clothes.

Zimmereben / Alpengasthof Astegg

Starting from right behind Mayrhofen’s train station, the hike was mostly shaded and very quickly ascending in the forest to Zimmereben. Not much to see along the way but there’s already a pretty great viewpoint at Zimmereben. There’s also a fun, short zipline (the kind where you sit on disk).

The hike continues pretty steeply in the forest up a few flight of stairs, while there is a path of (what I think is very easy) via ferrata. There are viewpoints here and there of the mountains.