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).

Heavy snowfall in Innsbruck is inevitably followed by the early-morning sound of explosions in the Nordkette Mountains. As the city's awakes, the men of the avalanche safety commission are already out and about blasting away the snow to keep the population safe.

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.

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.

When Covid-19 restrictions made life in the city hard to take, our author grabbed his laptop and headed for the hills to set up his very own home office in a mountain hut. Here's how he got on.

We asked international couples about the role the mountains have played in their relationship.