Seefeld

The second part of this year’s Alpine adventure is 10 days in the picturesque mountain village of Seefeld, Austria. We first visited Seefeld in 2012 when we spent a delightful (but quite snowy) week exploring the area – that trip included a full-on blizzard!  As with our stay in Innichen this year’s visit to Seefeld offered us a mix of winter hiking and cross-country skiing along with many opportunities to sample the local cuisine.

Seefeld is conveniently located on a major rail line with easy connections to Munich airport so the inbound and outbound travel are very easy. It’s only 11 miles away from Innsbruck by rail, so quick day trips to this famous city are always an option as are trips to other regional rail destinations like Garmisch.  We originally learned about Seefeld via the Internet while researching possible European as well as US destinations with good cross-country skiing.  Located in the Tyrolean Alps just south of Germany, Seefeld sits on a plateau high above Innsbruck. The elevated mountain location in combination with surprisingly level and long valley floors makes Seefeld ideal for cross-country skiing.

We’ve become fans of cross-country skiing for a variety of reasons including the lack of crowds, the solitude, the relative safety, and the ease of travel compared with the bulkier, heavier gear required for downhill skiing. We’ve done a fair amount of cross-country skiing in the States, mostly while we lived in Park City UT and Granby CO but also during trips to Jackson Hole WY, Whitefish MT, and Jackson NH.  None of this prepared us for both the quantity and quality of trails that can be found in Seefeld.

Seefeld boasts nearly 300 km of cross-country ski trails as well as three downhill ski areas. The cross-country skiing is arguably some of the best in Europe (if not the world) as this area hosted the Nordic combined and cross-country skiing events for both the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics, the 1985 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, and numerous world cup events. If you’re even remotely a fan of cross-country skiing a visit to this area needs to be on your bucket list! 

We’ll definitely plan on making a return trip to this region of Austria, perhaps during the Spring or Fall when we can see the beautiful countryside clad in something other than white …