Between TikTok and the cowshed, mountaineering and village festivals: We talked to a group of friends from the Villgratental valley about their youth in the mountains. The photographer Maidje Meergans captured moments from their everyday life.

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 easy cruising to extreme climbing, Tirol is a paradise for off-piste skiing and freeriding. For three local brothers, exploring the mountains is a family affair. Their alpine adventures large and small are a ritual since childhood– and a tradition that bind the bonds of brotherhood tighter than ever.

Daniel Sperl, 38, and his Columbian wife Carolina Osorio Rogelis, 41, live in Innsbruck. They are both involved in the Climate Alliance Austria and import fair-trade coffee from Columbia, transported across the seas on sailing ships.

Timna, 31, and her Argentinian husband Juan, 34, first met on a beach in South America. Today the family lives in Innsbruck.

For Michael Reiter, 34, and his husband Markus, 45, it was love not a first but at second sight. Today the couple run the Hotel Eiserne Hand in Fieberbrunn.

Without the mountains Mario Käppeli, 32, and Elena Barbist, 20, would have probably never met. Three years after their first climbing date, the couple - a student and a former professional snowboarder - still spend most of their time exploring the mountains around Innsbruck.

Far from civilisation, the highest huts in the Alps have always exerted a special fascination. These mountaineering basecamps are a gateway to an otherwise inaccessible world of sheer rockfaces and eternal ice. Among the most eye-catching and awe-inspiring high-mountain huts in the Austrian Alps is the Brandenburger Haus. Perched at 3,277 metres above sea level, it can be reached on foot in six to eight hours either from the Kaunertal Valley or the Ötztal Valley.

Ski bums are to winter what hippies are to summer – freedom-loving youngsters who work at night to ski all day. However, the ski bum has become an endangered species in recent years, even in traditional hotbeds like St. Anton. We set out to learn what it takes to be a ski bum and whether this happy-go-lucky way of life can survive in the 21st century.