Ski touring in the Silvretta

The Silvretta, straddling the Austrian-Swiss border, is one of the classic ski-touring ranges of the Alps — a compact cluster of glaciated 3,000-metre peaks, gentle enough to be a rite of passage yet serious enough to feel like real mountaineering. The Silvretta Runde loops through the heart of it.

Across a week you skin from hut to hut, climbing glacier flanks to summits like Piz Buin, then skiing back down spring snow, day after day, in a landscape of ice and rock with the comfort of an Alpine Club hut waiting each evening.

It's the archetype of the multi-day ski tour.

The terrain is mostly moderate but genuinely alpine — crevassed glaciers, high cols, fast-changing weather — which makes it ideal for competent tourers stepping up to glaciated, multi-day travel. The spring timing gives long daylight 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 like Piz Buin, then skiing spring snow back down, and repeating.

The terrain is mostly moderate but genuinely alpine — crevassed glaciers, high cols, and weather that turns fast at altitude — so you travel roped on the glaciers and carry avalanche gear. Nights are spent in Alpine Club huts. Days are long and physical, with early starts for stable snow.

This is for competent off-piste skiers with touring and basic glacier experience, not a first tour. The reward is a chain of remote summits and descents with barely another soul about.

Go in the spring ski-touring season, roughly March to May, once the snowpack has settled and daylight is long. Base your circuit on the Silvretta's Alpine Club huts and book them ahead.

Come with real touring experience, avalanche gear (transceiver, shovel, probe) and glacier kit (rope, harness, ski crampons), plus the fitness for consecutive 1,000-metre ascents; if you're newer to glaciated terrain, hire a mountain guide, as many do. Check the avalanche bulletin daily and keep the schedule flexible for weather.

Reach the range via the Montafon (Austria) or the Engadin (Switzerland). Skins and ski crampons are standard kit for the crevassed sections.