Remote Austrian mountain valley Lesachtal preserves its natural ways

By Claudia Bell Aug 3, 2010, 13:09 GMT

Liesing, Austria - The reputation of the locals in the remote and isolated Lesachtal valley in the Alps of southern Austria is not the best one.

'Distrustful and taciturn' is one description warning people who may be thinking of visiting the region. Another is that they are 'withdrawn, hard to approach for strangers and visitors.'

But what you may also find when you go there is not tight-lipped silence but instead a natural, unimposing warmheartedness. It is true, however, that many of the valley's natives do take a sceptical attitude towards modern developments.

Tourism here is based on the idea of leaving nature alone and making it socially-compatible, in an environment of natural farming methods which spare the landscape.

These are aspects which one will see again and again when visiting the Lesachtal, a some 110-kilometre-long valley stretching through two provincial regions, East Tyrol and Carinthia.

In fact, the some 1,500 local residents are very keen on preserving the natural beauty of their valley.

Large hotels are taboo, and the residential houses are governed by strict regulations, being limited to a ground floor, a first floor and an attic floor, says Christian Unterguggenberger of the Lesachtal Tourism Association in Liesing.

The mountain slopes and pastures in the valley are steep, and so to this very day most of the mowing of hay is still done by hand. For their effort the farmers are given financial support, but in return they must also pile the hay to dry on the traditional wooden poles, called 'koesn' and to preserve these for the next 20 years.

The old traditional farmhouses should also be preserved, the people in such towns as Maria Luggau, St Lorenzen, Liesing and Birnbaum agree.

And so, while hiking through this idyllic setting, visitors will come across nicely-renovated farmsteads, charming 'Zuhaeusln' or annex buildings, and, on the Trattenbach stream, five intact water-powered mills.

To this day Lesachtal is called the 'Valley of 100 Mills.' In its heyday, the valley had upwards of 200 mills noisily churning away powered by the racing mountain stream. The farmers used the hydropower to grind their grain, but also harnessed the water to drive elevators and plows, threshing machines and sawmills.

Hikers will find more than 300 kilometres of sign-posted trails in the Lesachtal. The trails range in difficulty between flat stretches in the valley floor to steep treks and rock climbing up into the mountain pastures and slopes of the Karnisch and Lienz Dolomite ranges. Usually only a very few people are to found on these latter trails, judging by the sparse number of entries in the signature books awaiting atop the mountain peaks.

But Time also does not stand still in Lesachtal. One of the modern accomplishments is the connecting highway B 111, stretching some 70 kilometres between Koetschach-Mauthen to Sillian and passing through many small hamlets.

This does not add up to extremely noisy traffic, but to this day many local inhabitants have not become accustomed to the flow of cars and motorcycles through their towns.

One elderly man is standing in a field and watching a farmer at work. After a hearty local salutation of 'Gruess Gott' (God's greeting) and a short chat with a female hiker passing by, the old man shakes his head and sighs, 'Ach, ever since this road was paved things have never been the same as before.'

And when he's asked how long ago was that he replies: 'About 50 years ago.'