Brunner Andreas
State-certified IFMGA mountain and ski guide
South Tyrolean Mountain and Ski Guides Association
Tel.: +39 320 1123068
Email: suedtirolalpin@gmail.com
Georg Plattner Str. 12
39040 Feldthurns (BZ) - Italy
VAT No.: 03152210211
SÜDTIROLALPIN
Mountain guides in South Tyrol and the Dolomites
Our experienced mountain guides from South Tyrol will take you safely to the most beautiful places in the Dolomites and throughout the Alps.
Whether challenging summits, exciting climbing tours, dream ski tours or extraordinary travel adventures – our wide range of tours offers the right experience for everyone.
The whole team shares a deep-rooted bond with the mountains, which we are lucky enough to live out every day. Thanks to 300 days of sunshine a year on the southern side of the Alps and a job we love doing, our tours become unforgettable days that you will love looking back on.
Have fun browsing our site and choosing your next mountain tour!
GET IN TOUCH
Send a quick enquiry
Office hours
5 days a week at flexible times
...please allow us 2 to 3 days to reply to enquiries, as we are out and about a lot
OUR FAMILY OFFER
FAMILY
ALPIN
Keep an eye out for our sheep Herbert and discover great offers especially for families.
Herbert is hiding in some of the tours on the website that are particularly well suited to outings with the whole family. For these, we have come up with a special offer:
Children up to the age of 14 come along free of charge with their parents
...Try the ski guiding, via ferrata or climbing offers – that's where he was last seen!
YOUR MOUNTAIN GUIDES
MOUNTAIN GUIDE - SOUTH TYROL
# MOUNTAIN AND SKI GUIDE # MOUNTAIN GUIDE # GUIDA ALPINA
Georg Plattner Straße 12
39040 Feldthurns / Velturno
Italy (BZ)
Berg- und Skiführer - Mountain Guide - Guida Alpina
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THE HISTORY OF SOUTH TYROL'S MOUNTAIN GUIDES
The beginnings
A profession with an exciting and varied history, marked by many difficult episodes and setbacks, as well as two world wars. It all began towards the end of the 18th century – more precisely, with the ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786. At that time and in the decades that followed, it was mainly scientists who needed companions with local knowledge and a sure footing in the terrain for their research and surveying. Slowly but surely, the first particularly skilled “mountain guides” stood out and made a name for themselves. Back then, however, guiding was still a long way from being a regulated profession.
Climbing the highest Alpine peaks was in fashion, above all among wealthy Englishmen, but it took place mainly in the Western Alps. So it took a little longer in Tyrol for it to become clear that mountain guiding could earn people money. The reason was simple: mountaineers were still rare, so demand for guides was rare too. The first official regulation of mountain guiding in Tyrol then dates from the 1860s.
At first, the Tyrolean mountain guides were still a motley crew from the most varied backgrounds. But demand kept growing, and there was a real search for suitable mountaineers to accompany the ever-increasing number of tourists into the mountains. Some mountain guides began to invest the comparatively very good pay they earned for their tours shrewdly in the tourism industry.
In the 1870s, the German and Austrian Alpine Club took the mountain guides under its wing and began to regulate the profession, to ensure proper training and, above all, to provide social security in the event of accidents. For the time, this was anything but a given. Mountain guides were a privileged profession.
The golden age of mountain guiding
Never before or since have mountain guides enjoyed such high social standing or been so financially well off as in the years 1880 to 1910. Their opinion carries weight, they sit on municipal councils, rank among the top earners of their day and invest shrewdly in tourist infrastructure, hotels and mountain huts. In South Tyrol, the mountain guides are among the pioneers of what is today a thriving tourism industry, and demand for guided tours is growing. By now, even the middle class can afford to spend their holidays in the mountains. Michl Innerkofler, Franz Innerkofler, Johann Niederwieser Stabeler, Hanssepp Pinggera and Peter Salcher are the outstanding figures among the South Tyrolean mountain guides of that era. More and more people now want to take up this highly respected profession. Aspiring mountain guides have to complete increasingly demanding training. At the same time, a new set of mountain guide regulations backs the fully qualified mountain guides and assigns them the aspirants as porters.
The church spoils the fun
Around the turn of the century, the Church began to interfere. Tourism and the moral decline that came with it were a thorn in the side of the clergy. Caught in the middle were South Tyrol's mountain guides, who, as pioneers of tourism, were particularly targeted. A ban was issued: without first attending Holy Mass, no Sunday mountain tours were allowed any more. But people found a way round this too: during that era, many mountain huts were given their own chapel, where Mass was said at the crack of dawn so that the planned tours could still be started in good time.
The First World War
With the outbreak of the First World War, tourism – and with it mountain guiding – came to a complete standstill. Worse still, when Italy switched sides in May 1915 and declared war on Austria-Hungary, South Tyrol suddenly found itself on the front line. As this new front consisted almost entirely of mountains, it was established in the most inaccessible terrain and defended by every means available. Now it was the South Tyrolean mountain guides who, as experts in difficult and inaccessible terrain, especially in the Dolomites, became the most sought-after soldiers for the spearheads in the foremost lines. A fact that was to cost many renowned mountain guides their lives. The best-known example is Sepp Innerkofler, whom war propaganda turned into a war hero. His service in the war was short-lived. However, he was responsible for a successful solo ascent of the Kleine Zinne, from where he directed the Austrian artillery fire. He also climbed numerous peaks to carry out reconnaissance and observation or to surprise enemy patrols. Yet he died as early as 4 July 1915, while trying to overrun an Italian position on the Paternkofel with his „Flying Zinnen Patrol“. Right up to the end of the war in autumn 1918, those in charge of the mountain war refused to admit the hopelessness of this front, which barely moved for years. Practically until the last day of the war, soldiers and materiel were squandered in the mountains utterly senselessly.
A new state
The wreckage facing the mountain guiding profession in South Tyrol after the war is enormous. Mountaineering ranks low on people's list of priorities, and tourism has practically ceased to exist. Many mountain guides scrape by with side jobs as craftsmen or farmers. South Tyrol is now part of Italy, and so the CAI (Club Alpino Italiano) also courts the favour of the South Tyrolean guides. At first, however, most of the guides, active but largely out of work, decide to stay with the Alpenverein. When all alpine clubs not belonging to the CAI are dissolved by decree in 1923, this decision becomes void. Soon Mussolini takes another momentous step: since the fascist regime is no friend of regional autonomy, in 1930 the guides' organisation is centralised as well and the “National Consortium of Mountain Guides and Porters” is founded. To make matters worse, before the First World War hardly anyone dared venture into the mountains without a mountain guide. But during this period so-called guideless climbing became more and more popular – and raised the standard of mountaineering to a level that would have been unthinkable only a few decades earlier. All in all, difficult times for the mountain guides of South Tyrol, a far cry from the golden age.
The Option and the Second World War
For a long time, the Italian regime tried to turn South Tyrol into an Italian land. In vain. In 1939, Hitler and Mussolini agreed to make the stubborn South Tyroleans an offer: either stay in South Tyrol and become Italian, or leave and remain German. This Option also confronted many of South Tyrol's mountain guides with a big question: were there even any mountains in the new homeland they had been promised? The figures from the national guides' consortium are striking: once the optants had been deducted, only 7 guides and 6 porters were still registered in South Tyrol. In other words, almost 90% of all guides and porters chose to emigrate – even slightly more than the 85% of optants among the population as a whole. In hindsight, it must be seen as a blessing in disguise that the outbreak of the Second World War thwarted these plans to resettle an entire people. But war is and remains war – suffering and dying. Like every other area of society, the Second World War also reduced mountain guiding to rubble and ashes. How many mountain guides were among the 8,000 South Tyroleans who fell is not known. For South Tyrol's mountain guides, too, the end of the war in 1945 therefore marked something like a zero hour.
A new beginning
A first important milestone for mountain guiding in South Tyrol was the founding of the South Tyrolean Alpine Club (AVS) in 1946. A new mountain guide regulation was introduced and things slowly began to look up. Yet as late as 1948, almost half of all mountain huts were still not staffed. Customers were also lacking, as entering South Tyrol involved major bureaucratic hurdles. With the first Statute of Autonomy, the Province of South Tyrol also began to take mountain guide training under its wing and to support it financially. New mountain guides were presented with their diplomas in the chamber of the provincial parliament. In 1956 the mountain guide group was founded within the AVS. With its own training and its own badge, it competed with the CAI. However, it was not until 1976 that the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA) recognised this badge and authorised AVS mountain guides to guide abroad as well. In the meantime, tourism kept growing, and the many young mountain guides who gained their diplomas in the post-war years and slowly but surely took over from the „old“ guides adapted – they realised that tours on their own doorstep alone could not provide a year-round income and began working across the entire Alpine arc. A new relationship with guests emerged: instead of choosing a local guide on the spot and therefore constantly changing guides, the guest became a regular client who took their mountain guide with them everywhere.
IFMGA and South Tyrol Mountain Guides Association
In 1965 the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA) was founded in Switzerland. Its most important achievement was to open first the Alpine and today almost all the world's borders to mountain guides. Guides can practise their profession in all the mountain ranges of the world, and the blue-and-white logo is recognised (almost) everywhere. With the second Statute of Autonomy in 1972, South Tyrol de facto became a region with its own political responsibility in a whole range of areas, including „tourism and hospitality“, which explicitly covers „mountain guides and porters“. The first to fall victim to this autonomous regulation of mountain guiding were the „porters“. They had served their time and gave way to the "aspirant mountain guide". In 1978 South Tyrol's first autonomous „Mountain and Ski Guide Regulation“ was finally passed. On 29 November 1980 another long-overdue step followed: the separation of the mountain guides' association from the alpine clubs CAI and AVS. 110 of the 130 mountain guides licensed at the time voted to found the „Association of South Tyrolean Mountain and Ski Guides“. Now all the guides in the province were united in one association, and the province could also pay out funding directly to a single point of contact. The model has proved its worth: since then, numerous aspirant guides have completed the training organised by the „South Tyrolean Mountain Guides Association“ and today rank among the most sought-after guides in the world.
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