Forsthofalm spends winter doing the usual Alpine routine – skis by the door, glühwein on tap, the full après-ski. But the ski lift outside the hotel keeps running after the snow melts, ferrying hikers and cyclists rather than skiers – running an entirely different operation once the season turns.
The drive in from Salzburg reaffirms your choice to be here. Rolling hills stacked with cows, waterfalls cutting through the rock face, streams cutting under wooden footbridges every few hundred metres. As you’re encouraged by the hotel signs on your approach up the steep hill the hotel’s situated on, the view over the valleys just keeps getting better and better, climbing to 1,050 metres by the time you reach the door.
We went straight up to the room before anything else – wood panelling floor to ceiling, a window big enough to keep the valley in view from the bed. Every angle of the hotel gets some version of that view, which makes the 7am yoga class a harder sell than it should be. We wasted no time after that, grabbing a drink straight from the fridge stocked by the door for exactly that purpose. The bulletin board just behind reception lists the available classes: kickboxing, full-body workouts, and something billed as a mix of Haka Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi. Every day brings something different – pilates one morning, yoga the next, meditation squeezed in between hikes.
The activity list reads like a small brochure of its own. A hike to the Birnbachloch Glacier, the lowest-lying glacier in Central Europe. A harder route over four surrounding peaks for anyone feeling ambitious. The nearby Leosgang art trail, a gentler 3km loop past works by female artists. An e-bike Genusstour looping through nearby towns, and directions to Europe’s highest treetop trail above Hinterglemm. We took the e-bikes into town, weaving down a cycle path shared almost entirely with grazing cows rather than cars, which is a peaceful way to travel right up until a cow wanders fully into your lane and you have to negotiate.
The Asitz trail leaves straight from the garden – nothing but a fence between the hotel grounds and the mountain, and then you’re on it. The BMX track cuts into the hillside just above the path, riders launching off jumps that weaved under and over the path as we passed. Half an hour in, the first landing opens up, where a queue waits for the flying fox zipline, kids are throwing themselves around Sinne Park, and Stille Wasser sits still enough to double as a mirror. From there the path climbs straight into thick forest, another hour of it, before reaching the first peak, where a toboggan run drops down one side and Asitzbrau is waiting on the other. We stopped there for a beer before carrying on to Greater Asitz, where the valley opens out below and the cows from the drive in look like white dots scattered across the hillside.
Two wooden saunas run on different daily herbal bases at temperatures of your preference, alongside a steam room, mountain view relaxation rooms, yoga studio and a rooftop heated pool overlooking the mountain. A full body massage later, herbal tea in hand, standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows watching the valley, it’s hard to remember the dry fields of the UK when looking over miles of bright fresh green. Treatments range from a honey-herbal full-body scrub to a facial that comes with eyebrow shaping thrown in – or, for anyone taking the indulgence further, a rooftop bath under the stars with chocolate fondue and champagne, sauna booked out just for the two of you.
Every night runs the same shape – a la carte off the grill or the set menu, salad buffet included either way. Dinner ends the same way regardless, not at the table but at the bar, working through games of pool while the bartender steers us toward his own Alpine spins on the classics. It didn’t take much convincing to go from negroni onto a rooftop spritz, lavender syrup catching the light against a bar wall stacked with “cheers” written out in every language they could think of. The beer is cheap on purpose – a surplus problem, we were told, one they’d rather solve by handing it over than storing it.
Saturdays have the guests all dressed in white. A grill buffet of nonstop scorched whole fish laid next to slabs of meat still hissing off the coals, a DJ running through a set built for people trying very hard not to spill red wine down a white shirt.
Forsthofalm runs the same building through two completely different seasons and doesn’t ask you to pick a side of yourself to bring along. From September through November they call it Orange Mountain Days, but whichever week you land on, the bulletin board still has the 7am yoga class on it, and still has nothing stopping you staying in bed until ten. Nobody at reception is checking which one you went for.
