Eriro hotel — an intimate new retreat in the Austrian Alps — is all about grounding, but our stay begins with a dramatic ascent, as heights-shy Mr Smith and I find ourselves sitting in a gondola, set adrift above carpets of white powder snow and emerald pines. It’s an unconventional start to our Tyrolean trip, but undeniably memorable. ‘Germany has the higher mountain,’ Eriro’s General Manager Henning Schaub explains, as we’re hoisted some 1,550 metres above sea level, ‘but Austria has the better view.’ And what a view it is, with blue Alpine skies peeking over the Zugspitze peak, whose crag-strewn massif creates a raw, elemental backdrop to our off-grid Austrian stay. Then, after conquering our vertigo, we had just one last hurdle to overcome before check-in.
Suede Asics, it turns out, are a woefully inadequate shoe for navigating foot-tall snowdrifts, and the short walk from the gondola station to the hotel’s snowmobile quickly becomes a humbling display of urban ineptitude as we shuffle, penguin-like, past a crowd of amused skiers. With a sliver of dignity intact, we finally make it to Eriro’s handsome timber building ready to log off and surrender to life less, well, cringe.
The name Eriro is derived from an old High German word meaning ‘the entrance to the forest’, and on entering the lobby — a rustic, sun-drenched space clad in spruce collected from neighbouring forests — I’m struck by the grounding scent of wood. ‘We believed it was important to honour our surroundings and bring them inside,’ Amelie Posch, one of the five co-founders behind the green-minded lodge, tells me. ‘Our concept — archaic, regional, handmade and unique — has provided us with a limited yet precious material palette, which we used throughout the property. From stones gathered in the nearby creek to the sheep’s wool, it was crucial for us to use products and design elements that tell a story and reflect the local environment.’
Just like Eriro’s Alpine surroundings, the interiors here are full of texture and contrast. As we’re led to our room, we coo over back-lit shoji-style screens and the rough-hewn brass panels built into the lobby’s central fireplace; we run our fingers across walls cloaked in bobbly sheep’s wool and observe how the light hits silver quartzite flagstone floors. In our room, two pairs of woollen socks are arranged neatly on the bed, an invitation to treat the hotel as home.
With toasty feet we slink down to the restaurant, where mullet-haired chef Alexander Thos and his team roll out a hearty Tyrolean feast of homemade bread and butters, knödel dumplings and a family-sized portion of Kaiserschmarrn pancakes, torn and served with fruit. Food is tightly woven into Eriro’s strictly regional concept, which embraces locally grown ingredients and forest-foraged herbs — no small feat for an area that spends half the year under thick blankets of snow. Still, a peek inside the larder reveals exactly how it’s done, with jars upon jars of pickled goods from carrots and beets to pine cones.
The main draw, we soon discover, is Eriro’s holistic approach to wellbeing. Here, mindfulness is not just a trendy buzzword, but a way to permit the mind to wander and reignite creativity. There is no WiFi, no TVs, and boredom is considered a luxury, something to be cherished. ‘We wanted to create the place that we all longed for, a sanctuary that calms the mind,’ explains Posch. ‘After all, who can enjoy nature and silence while constantly compelled to check their phone? Rediscovering boredom, listening attentively to the birds, or painting pictures in the clouds. So simple, yet truly special.’
After some mountain-gazing over a breakfast of cheeses, porridge, homemade waffles and jams, we make our way upstairs to the hotel’s dedicated art studio, where local ceramicist Stefanie Kappeler (whose wares can be found around the hotel) guides us in shaping clay into bowls, cups and — in Mr Smith’s case — rather ambitious wall hooks. On other days, guests can enjoy wood-carving workshops (‘Everyone in Tyrol works with wood in some way,’ Schaub assures me) or painting lessons. Not your typical wellness activities, but there’s something meditative and satisfying about being hands-on with natural materials: clay, wood, canvas.
Later that afternoon, we strap on snowshoes and venture out to explore the foothills of the Vorderer Tajakopf mountain. As we climb fir-tree-lined paths, the gentle murmur of brooks and bright calls of birds punctuate an otherwise hushed landscape. Through the trees, we glimpse Eriro perched below us, dwarfed in the shadow of the Zugspitze. We pass a plaque inscribed in old German and take a photo to translate later, and feel a profound sense of awe at our smallness against these ancient mountains and forests. After an hour we reach a valley where a single fir tree rises from a frozen lake; a lone sentinel in this vast, enduring plain.
Over the coming days, we have time to reflect on this experience, mainly in the spa, where a trio of muscle-soothing, onsen-style pools and duo of saunas look out over the mountains. From cosy day-beds we journal our trip, detailing the life-affirming private yoga session we took with practitioner Tatjana, and the warm attentiveness of our waitress Sandra, who never failed to notice when our glass is running low, and excursion guide Hannes, whose knowledge of this terrain runs deep and enthusiasm for it is infectious. ‘We want our guests to worry about nothing,’ says Posch, ‘which is why we’ve chosen an all-inclusive concept. [We want them to] eat, drink and exercise whenever they want, without thinking about whether it’s really necessary or not. It is a kind of freedom, we believe.’
Free is how we feel by the time we check-out. Free of quotidian anxieties, free of our digital tethers, free of any lingering Asics-induced embarrassment. But the most profound form of freedom we find is in the stillness — the constant chatter of the mind replaced by a quiet awe for nature. Riding the gondola back down, we ran the photo of the plaque we passed earlier through a translator app: ‘Great and wide as eternity, they will spread before us, majestic mountains and heights.’ We consider it a souvenir, this truth we have felt for ourselves.
Longing for some ‘you’ time? Browse our collection of European spa hotels