People

More farmers, better vegetables – is that true? Tanja Westfall-Greiter runs a market garden at Hattingerberg in Tirol. She is convinced that society should pay more tribute to the cultivation of land.

Martina Mrak recognises a similar desire in all her clients: a longing for unspoiled nature. But for Tirol to preserve its pristine mountain landscape, there needs to be a willingness to compromise.

When it comes to Tirol’s contemporary architecture landscape, Innsbruck-based Christian Hammerl and Elias Walch are at the forefront, creating spaces and designs that age with grace, relying on a style that is rooted in tradition but with contemporary elements in all the right places.

Does the taste of honey change when the bees are not buzzing in the valley but high up in the alpine mountains? Reinhard Hetzenauer, chairman of the Tirolean Beekeepers Association, tells us more about the life of bees at 1,500 metres above sea level and the unique taste of alpine rose honey.

Fire, water, cattle and wood. Essentially, this is all Sarah Kofler, Janis Pönisch and their two children need each summer, when they leave their work and city life in the valley to spend two months on an ‘Alm’ high in the Austrian Alps. Tending 34 cattle in a world that you thought was long gone at the heart of Hohe Tauern National Park.

From international banking to hotel management. From civil servant to mountain farmer. We talked to people in Tirol who decided to escape the ratrace and start all over again.

Snowboarding and Innsbruck go together like salt and pepper. As you’d expect for a place that is considered ‘the Birthplace of snowboarding in Europe’, their “Skyline Park” is pretty awesome. Terrain park shaper Bjarni Thor Valdimarsson, an Iceland native now living in Tirol, gives us an insight into what goes on behind the scenes.

Tirol is home to more than a dozen remote end-of-valley communities. These small villages hidden away deep in the mountains have retained their original character. What is life like there? We met seven people who live at the end of a valley road (and none of them wanted to swap for a life in the city).

With a 78 percent grade, the thrilling double black Harakiri Trail rakes in hard-core honours for being Austria’s steepest downhill run. This sickeningly steep terrain requires a special winch cat to groom, which is driven by heavy machinery operator Christoph Egger.

Things didn’t always used to be better, but a lot was certainly very different than today – especially in the mountains. There was less talk of sustainability, yet its core principles were lived. Sometimes this was a conscious decision, sometimes not – and sometimes it was simply because natural materials were the only things available to make clothing, equipment and packaging. What can we learn from earlier generations? We set off on a journey to find out what it means to live in harmony with nature, accompanied on our travels by a mountain guide who has spent more than half a century out and about in the mountains.