Mountains2BAustrian & German Alps · both seasons
The Arlberg road at night in falling snow: a snow-clearing truck with its beacons on, an operator standing in the headlights, galleries and rock wall above
The Arlberg · one road

Five Arlberg villages depend on 580 metres of climb

The Arlberg pass road links St. Christoph, St. Anton, Stuben, Zürs and Lech, and keeping it open through a winter is a continuous operation with crews, galleries and a tunnel underneath it.

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Five settlements, and the metres between them

Altitudes in metres. The road runs Langen to St. Anton; two of the five sit up a branch that closes on its own schedule.

1400Stuben

Base of the western ramp, and where the gradient sharpens.

 1720Zürs

A bowl that collects snow from every direction.

 1450Lech

Lower than Zürs, further from the pass, cut off on its own terms.

 1800St. Christoph

Highest settlement on the road. A hospice has stood here since 1386.

 1300St. Anton

Eastern anchor, where road and railway meet again.

Three things on this pass worth an hour

Everything else is on the section pages.

A present-day ski school line on a groomed slope, instructor standing in front of them, valley behind. Ordinary daylight, no period stylingARLBERG

Hannes Schneider filmed his ski method and exported it

Hannes Schneider taught a sequenced technique at St. Anton from the 1920s, and the Arlberg method was exported through films, schools and, after 1939, through Schneider himself.

Read this Large blue cable car wheel mechanism inside the Galzigbahn station's glass-roofed structureARLBERG

St. Anton rotates cabins through a boarding wheel

The Galzigbahn's cabins are loaded on a rotating ferris wheel inside the station, an engineering answer to a site with no room for a conventional platform.

Read this Snow-covered alpine valley with jagged peaks flanking a village nestled belowARLBERG

Flexen galleries deflect avalanches and keep Lech open

The Flexen road is cut into the wall and roofed where the avalanche paths cross it, which is why Lech and Zürs are reachable at all in February.

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The hamlet under deep snow from the road above, one lit window, a figure walking the street. Wide

Stuben loses the sun for weeks at a time, and produced the man who taught the world to ski

Photo: Stuben Arlbergpass, Böhringer 2019 · Wikimedia Commons

No snow crew, no lift queue, and the toll road over the Silvretta open as long as the weather allows.

Summer is the half nobody photographs. The huts open in late June and are staffed until autumn.

A hairpin road cut into a high alpine slope with a glacier valley beyond
The Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse climbs to a car park with a glacier in front of it, and closes for the winter every year.Photo: Grossglockner High Alpine Road · Wikimedia Commons
Huts

Alpenverein wardens have staffed huts since 1862

3 guides Salzburgerland

Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse closes every winter by permission

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Seven places, and everything filed under them

Or go straight to every guide on the site.

ARLBERG

The pass, the galleries and the villages on it.

5 guides

ZILLERTAL

Mayrhofen, Hintertux and the line up the valley floor.

3 guides

SALZBURGERLAND

Gastein, Kaprun, Saalbach and the Grossglockner.

4 guides

BERCHTESGADEN

Königssee, the Watzmann and the Kehlstein.

3 guides

WERDENFELS

Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Zugspitze.

3 guides

LAKES

The water, and why it is that colour.

3 guides

HUTS

The staffed refuges and the clubs that run them.

3 guides

Kept going by

Hut keepers, lift operators and valley outfitters with a stake in this ground.