Autor/-in: Allan Hartley

An engineer by profession, Allan Hartley spent the majority of his working life overseas engaged on major construction projects. Throughout this time, however, he maintained his close links with Austria, which he discovered totally by accident in the early 1970s while trying to avoid atrocious weather conditions in the higher mountains of the western Alps. He believes 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 that they are areas better suited to the average mountaineer than the higher mountains to the west.