Nobody in Tyrol knows who or what the month of February actually is: Is it the last month of winter? Is it the first harbinger of spring, when some people swap their winter coats for transitional jackets? In this country, it's a bit of both: as cold as an ice rink shortly after sunset, as lukewarm as the last of the tea in the thermos flask after a long winter hike.
Traditionally, Tyroleans use February to chase away the winter. In various carnival customs, carnival jesters dress up in colourful costumes and elaborately carved masks and parade through the villages to celebrate this time of year. At the Wampelerreiten in Axams, winter and spring engage in a real battle: On Nonsensical Thursday, the disguised riders wrestle with the Wampelers until they have thrown winter onto their backs with a fat paunch stuffed with hay. In the parades of Innsbruck and the surrounding area, the turn of the year remains symbolic: figures such as Spiegeltuxer or Melcher, Zottler or Zaggler represent the seasons, in whose handmade garments the so-called Muller and Matschgerer parade through the streets. In Rum near Innsbruck, however, the Muller parade only takes place every 5 years.
If you don't want to know anything about the slightly superstitious goings-on in the villages of Tyrol, you can also take part in sporting activities, but you have to be prepared for the whims of the crazy month. Guided snowshoe hikes in the Karwendel Nature Park offer the chance of one of the last glimpses of the winter flora and fauna of the season. Chamois, deer, ibex and eagles can be seen in Achenkirch on the shores of Lake Achensee. If you want to burn off some energy, you can explore one of the area's breathtaking cross-country ski trails on your cross-country skis. February is the ideal month for extensive cross-country skiing tours with its cooler days, although the sun is not unwelcome. On our website you will find over 80 cross-country ski trails throughout the country as well as their condition and level of difficulty.
On the local ski slopes at the end of February, you can see sun worshippers for whom a simple T-shirt has already replaced a ski jacket. Cold protection cream can now be confidently swapped for sun cream, as the sun is shining longer and longer. For this reason, some ski resorts, such as SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser, open half an hour longer at the end of the season - so that ski enthusiasts can savour the approaching spring on a last ride in the sunset.
Families with children who prefer to take it easy towards the end of the season will find Tyrol's child- and family-friendly toboggan runs the perfect place for an outing, which is best rounded off with tea and cake in a mountain hut.
On one of the many night toboggan runs throughout the region, you can whizz through the cool night air on well-prepared tracks. More than 50 toboggan runs throughout Tyrol are open on various evenings. If you want to save yourself the hassle of searching for a torch, it's better to choose a floodlit run. The moon toboggan run in Söll, for example, is illuminated and also has information boards telling you a lot about the starry sky and the phases of the moon. The best way to find out about the condition of the toboggan runs is to visit www.winterrodeln.org, which is regularly updated by the Tyrolean tobogganing community.
Crazy, diverse and full of events - that's February in Tyrol, which can be a lot of fun despite its unpredictable weather.
