Hut to Hut Touring in the Stubai Alps

An engineer by profession, Allan Hartley has spent the majority of his working life overseas engaged on major construction projects. However throughout this time he has maintained his close links with Austria, which he discovered totally by accident in the early 1970s in respite from atrocious weather conditions in the higher mountains of the western Alps. He maintains that Austria and the Dolomites of neighbouring Italy remain one of mountaineering's best kept secrets with their heady mix of superb scenery, good huts and first-class food, and are areas better suited to the average mountaineer than the higher mountains to the west. In addition to Austria, Allan has climbed extensively throughout the Alps, together with East Africa and the Greater Ranges in Nepal and Pakistan, and lesser known Zagros mountains of Iran and, more recently, the Hajr mountains of the Arabian peninsula. Not surprisingly, the author is a long-term member of the Austrian Alpine Club. When not abroad, the author's home is on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.