Ski touring in the Ötztal Alps

Vent is a tiny village at the head of the Ötztal, and above it lies one of the great classic ski-touring rounds of the Alps: the Venter Runde, a hut-to-hut circuit over glaciated 3,000-metre summits close to the Italian border.

Across a week you skin up long glacier flanks to peaks like the Wildspitze and Similaun, sleep in high Alpine Club huts, and ski back down untracked spring snow, day after day, in a landscape of ice and rock with barely a lift in sight.

This is proper ski mountaineering — glaciers, altitude, and self-reliance — but on mostly moderate terrain, which is why it's a rite of passage for tourers stepping up from day trips.

The spring timing gives long daylight, settling snowpacks and, on the right day, the transformed corn snow that makes glacier skiing sing.

A week of glaciated ski touring, hut to hut, skinning up 1,000-plus metres each day to 3,000-metre summits and skiing back down spring snow. The terrain is mostly moderate but genuinely alpine: crevassed glaciers, high cols, and weather that turns fast at altitude.

You sleep in Alpine Club huts, carry avalanche gear, and travel roped on the glaciers. Days are long and physical, with early starts to catch stable snow. This is for competent off-piste skiers with touring and basic glacier experience — not a first tour.

The reward is remote 3,000-metre summits and descents almost nobody else is on.

Go in the spring ski-touring season, roughly March to May, when the snowpack has settled and daylight is long. Base in Vent, the trailhead village, and book the Alpine Club huts along the round in advance.

Come with real touring experience, avalanche gear — transceiver, shovel, probe — and glacier kit, plus the fitness for consecutive 1,000-metre ascents; if you're newer to glaciated ground, hire a mountain guide, which many do here. Check the avalanche bulletin daily and keep the schedule flexible for weather.

Skins, ski crampons and a harness are part of the standard kit for the crevassed sections.