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.

When a fresh batch of snow falls to the ground, the world tends to quiet down. The Mountaineering Village of Schmirn is a place that receives huge amounts of snow each winter. However, this is as well a place that is far away from the madding crowd and from the noise of civilization. For one week, my wife and I explored this remote valley in the Tux Alps on snowshoes—and for the first time, we had opted for a car-free vacation in the mountains. Check out our backpacker’s report.