I just got back from my honeymoon which took me from Grindelwald to Vienna over 17 days. I'm still a bit jet-lagged, and have to filter through literally thousands photos so I will upload the photos later. We went from Grindelwald to Landeck via the Grimsell Pass and Chur. We visited Garmisch-Partikichen, Innsbruck, Zell am See, Salzburg and Vienna.
Firstly, I would like to say that Grindelwald has the most dramatic mountains I've ever seen. The mountains literally drop 9,000 ft from the top of Eiger 13000ft to the valley 4000ft.
On our drives through the Tirol I saw that almost every town has it's own lift and resort. It seems like many of the mountains out there have awkward exposures( south facing/west facing). Also, the landscape reminded me more of Vermont/New Hampshire than the rockies. The valleys were very lush, and looked a lot like vermont, so it clearly isn't as dry as out west. The mountains, like I said, looked more like Vermont in that the usable/skiable parts were often not rugged and there wasn't very much above tree line skiing, however, on the top of many of the mountains were limestone ridges that were like spines/vertical cliffs of what seemed like thousands of feet (the exception to this was the alberg, which is immense ). There were places there like the kitzstein glacier and the stubai glacier which were truly immense in scope, but for the most part, it didn't seem like the mountains were incredibly large. Zell am See, (where Nikki and I hiked the Pinzgauer Spanziergang) is surrounded by ski resorts that all seem within the scope of a mountain like Gore or Whiteface. There was very little terrain above the tree line with exception of Kitzstein to which you need to take a bus. Many of the mountains there had direct southern exposure, and also the majority of the summits were below 7,000 feet.
I look forward to returning to these places in the winter sometime in the near future. Again, I'll get those photos as soon as I have time.
