Things to Do in Kaprun
The rest-day list starts at the end of this street
Almost everything this region is known for away from the pistes is in Kaprun or on the mountain directly above it. The tunnel through the rock at 3,029m. The thermal spa. The alpine coaster. The valley cross-country tracks. The outdoor rink. People holidaying elsewhere in the valley get on a bus to reach them, and read about the journey before they read about the thing.
That changes what a day off is worth here. In most small ski villages the non-skier is the one being fitted around everybody else — dropped somewhere at nine, collected at four. In Kaprun the person not skiing can walk out of the door, take the same gondola as the rest of the party, get off at the top and come back down when they feel like it. Nobody has to organise them.
It also means a half day is a real option rather than a compromise. Ski the morning, be in twelve pools of warm water by two. Take the sightseeing lift up on the day your legs have gone. Put the children on the coaster in the hour between the lifts shutting and dinner, because it is three minutes' walk from where you dropped the skis.
The catch is one item and it is the best one. The summit is a whole day and it is only worth doing on a clear one, so it is the thing to keep flexible rather than book. Everything else on this page works in flat light, and one of them — the sledging — is not quite what people arrive expecting. Both are set out below, in the section they belong to rather than in the small print.
The ticket that is not a lift pass
The thing worth knowing before anything else: you do not need a ski pass to go up. The lift company sells a sightseeing ticket at the valley station, and it puts anyone who can stand in a lift queue on top of the glacier at 3,029m. The operator calls the complex up there TOP OF SALZBURG, and still uses its older name, Gipfelwelt 3000, alongside it. Ask for the sightseeing ticket by name; the counter staff will not assume it.
- Two viewing platforms, and they are the reason you are thereThey look out across the Hohe Tauern National Park and the highest mountains in Austria, and the lift company is straight about the fact that you are standing at the boundary of the national park rather than looking at it from a distance. This is the part that a cloudy morning takes away from you completely, which is why the whole outing is a decision made at breakfast rather than at booking.
- The National Park Gallery, which is a tunnel through the inside of the mountainA lit, level gallery bored through the rock from the summit station to the second platform, with six information stations along it covering the mountain's history, the engineering and the wildlife of the national park. You walk it in your normal coat and boots. It is the part nobody expects and the part everybody talks about afterwards, and it is also the answer for anyone in the party who does not love a viewing platform in a wind.
- Cinema 3000A small cinema up at the summit complex showing a film about the mountain, its animals and its plants. Twenty minutes out of the cold, and it is the natural break in the middle of a visit with children in it rather than a thing to make a special trip for.
- Lunch at the top, which turns the trip into a dayThere is a restaurant at the summit alongside the platforms, open year round, and eating there is what stops the visit being a ride up and a ride straight back down. Our Kaprun restaurants page has what the operator lists on the whole mountain, including the terrace partway up at the Alpincenter if you would rather break the journey than do it at the top.
- Ranger tours, and they are free with the ticket upThe lift company runs guided tours of the summit complex with Hohe Tauern National Park rangers as part of its own weekly winter programme, walking the gallery station by station and explaining what you are looking at from the platforms. Days and start times are set season by season and published by the operator, so check when you buy the ticket rather than turning up hopefully.
- What is not up there in winterThe ICE ARENA, the slide and snow-play area on the glacier plateau, is on almost every photograph of this mountain and it is a July and August attraction on the operator's own page. It is not part of a February visit. Worth knowing before somebody in the party arrives with a picture of it on their phone.
The big spa is here, and you do not have to be staying in it
The TAUERN SPA sits at the foot of the Kitzsteinhorn on the edge of the village, and the number that makes the point is its own: twenty thousand square metres of water and sauna world, indoors and out, with twelve pools and ten saunas and steam rooms, a separate children's area and a treatment side. It is a hotel, but the spa is not only for hotel guests, and that is the fact most people miss.
- Day tickets, not just room keysThe resort sells day-spa entry to people who are not staying there, which is what makes it usable on a ski holiday booked somewhere else in the village. It runs every day of the year on its own account. Buy on the door or online through the resort; we do not publish the prices because they are a tariff with several shapes to it and it changes.
- It is a half day at least, and better as a whole oneThis is not the hotel wellness room with a sauna and two loungers that a British party usually pictures. Between the indoor and outdoor water, the sauna world and somewhere to eat, people who go for an hour before dinner come out wishing they had gone at eleven. Treat it as the day's plan rather than the end of one.
- The thing to check before you take teenagersSauna areas in Austria are normally textile-free, and that is a genuine surprise to a first-time visitor rather than a small print detail. The water world and the sauna world are separate places here, with a children's area of their own. The house rules are the authority and they are published by the resort — read them before you go rather than at the door, and you will know which part of the building your party is going to.
- Getting there without a carIt is on the Kaprun side of the valley rather than in the middle of the village, so it is a short hop rather than a walk from every bed. The resort's own site names the bus line that runs from Zell am See to its entrance, and the village buses are free to everyone. Where you are staying decides whether this is a five-minute problem or a fifteen-minute one, which our Kaprun accommodation page goes into.
In this village, sledging happens on rails
Kaprun has an alpine coaster in the middle of town and no natural toboggan run of its own. That is not a criticism — the coaster is genuinely good and it runs when nothing else does — but if what you have pictured is a wooden sledge, a walk up and a track through the trees, you are going to be getting in something to reach it.
- The Maisi Flitzer, at the bottom of the gondolaTwo-seat cars on rails, hauled up and then released, with the brake in your own hands so a nervous rider goes slowly and a nine-year-old does not. It sits beside the Kaprun Center at the MK Maiskogelbahn valley station, which is to say in the middle of the village and a few steps from where your skis are already stored. The operator runs it all year, so it is there in a thaw, in the rain and in the flat light that has ruined the skiing.
- Who can ride itChildren from three go in the car with an adult, and older children ride alone once they meet the operator's own height rule. That makes it one of the few things on this page a family with a small child and a teenager can do together without splitting up. Its opening times sit with the lift company's other winter times rather than on a separate page.
- The natural runs are all somewhere elseThe regional tourist board's own toboggan register lists the family run at Köhlergraben in Zell am See, the floodlit run at Kohlschnait in Bruck, the very long floodlit run in the Wildkogel Arena at Bramberg, and snow tubing at Piesendorf. Every one of them is a journey out of Kaprun, and the toboggan hire stations the board names are all on the Zell side of the valley. This is a car or a bus afternoon, not a walk-out-of-the-hotel one.
- Night runs need checking, not assumingTwo of those runs are floodlit into the evening and one of them takes a dedicated toboggan bus on one day of the week. Which days, which hours and whether the run is open at all depend on the snow in the valley and are set each season, so the honest advice is to look it up on the day you fancy it. We publish none of those figures here, for the reason that they would be out of date by the time you read this.
Two kinds of walking, and only one of them needs snowshoes
There is flat, cleared, valley-floor walking that starts in the village and needs nothing but boots, and there is high-alpine snowshoeing on the glacier that needs kit and a lift ticket to get to the start. People conflate the two, book the wrong one and are either bored or out of their depth. They are different days.
- The Kapruner Moos circuit, from the villageThe tourist board's own pick for Kaprun: a gentle circular walk through the Filzmooswäldchen woods and out along field tracks beside the Salzach. It is flat, it is cleared, and it is the one to do on the afternoon somebody's knee has given up. Boots with a bit of grip are enough — the board says as much itself about the cleared trails.
- The riverside and the promenades, for the hour before dinnerThe board's own list of winter walks includes a long flat path along the Salzach and a short woodland trail, both at valley level and both usable in the last of the light. This is the low-effort end of the page and it is free. If you want the map rather than a description, the board publishes a winter hiking map covering the whole valley.
- The ICE CAMP Trail, which is the alpine oneA short, signed snowshoe route that starts at the Alpincenter on the Kitzsteinhorn, so you take the lifts up first and walk from there. The operator puts it at roughly half an hour each way. It climbs, it is properly high, and it is the walk that justifies hiring snowshoes rather than the one you do in trainers.
- What that trail walks you to: three igloos at 2,600 metresThe ICE CAMP is a set of three linked igloos built on the sun plateau, rebuilt each winter around a new piece of ice art, with a lounge inside and a sun deck and snack bar outside. Skiers reach it off the pistes and walkers reach it on the trail. It is not there all winter: the lift company opens it in the middle of January and runs it to about the middle of April, and it puts live music on the sun deck on selected Saturdays towards the end of that. A Christmas week will not see it.
- Going with a guideBoth the region and the lift company run weekly winter programmes with guided snowshoe hikes on them, some of them led by national park rangers, alongside guided ski tours and workshops. Two good reasons to take one: fresh snow off a trail is heavy, slow work that is much better with somebody who has done it, and the ranger-led ones tell you what you are walking through.
- Where the snowshoes come fromThe board lists its rental points, and one of them is the Bründl counter at the Maiskogelbahn valley station — the same counter our ski hire is collected from — with a ski-school shop in the village as the other Kaprun option. Snowshoes and poles are an over-the-counter hire, not part of what we book for you, so ask when you pick up your skis rather than expecting them to be on your booking.
The rink at the entrance to the village
Kaprun has its own outdoor ice rink at the entrance to the village, and the tourist board describes it as the family-friendly one of the region's rinks. Skates are hired there. It is a cheap, ordinary, genuinely lovely hour that costs nothing to arrange, and the only thing standing between you and it is the temperature.
- Turn up rather than bookSkate hire is on site, so a party that decides at four o'clock can be on the ice by half past. That makes it the easiest thing on this whole page to fit into a day that was supposed to be about something else.
- Hockey and curling, not just lapsThe board lists ice hockey as possible at the Kaprun rink and curling among the region's ice sports, which is worth knowing for a group of adults who would rather have a competition than a skate. Groups generally need arranging in advance rather than turning up, and that is a phone call to the rink or a word at the tourist office.
- It is outdoor ice, which is the whole riskAn outdoor rink at this altitude opens when the cold allows and closes when it does not, and no operator publishes a guaranteed season for one. Ask at your accommodation on the first morning rather than promising the children a Wednesday. In a mild week the honest answer is that it may not be running at all.
- The indoor answer is over in Zell am SeeIf it is too warm here, the covered rink on the other side of the valley runs whatever the weather and shares a roof with the town's pool. It is a bus ride, and the bus between the two towns is free with a valid Ski ALPIN CARD during lift operating hours — a daytime service, so an evening skate means working out the way back. Our Kaprun bars and après page sets that trap out in full.
What to do with a day the summit is in cloud
One item on this page is ruined by weather and the rest are not, which is a better ratio than most resorts manage. Here is the substitution to make when the webcams show grey, rather than the one people default to, which is a morning in the apartment and an expensive afternoon in a bar.
- The vehicle museum, which is indoors and in the villageVötter's holds a large private collection of cars, motorbikes, scooters and tractors from the fifties, sixties and seventies and earlier, laid out over a full exhibition floor rather than a corridor. Its own site publishes winter opening running from December through to Easter, which makes it one of the few village attractions here that is genuinely a winter business. Check the day on its own site before you walk down; we do not print hours for anything.
- Cross-country, because the valley has the lightKaprun carries 23km of its own tracks at valley level, and they connect into a much larger network running down the Pinzgau. On the day the cloud is sitting on the mountain, the valley floor is often clear and flat and quiet, and the tracks are a far better answer to flat light than a chairlift is. Skis and boots hire in the village.
- The spa, moved forward rather than cancelledThe single best use of a written-off morning, and the reason to keep the spa unbooked rather than pencilled in for Thursday. It runs every day of the year and nothing about it cares what the sky is doing. See the section above for what it is and how to get in without staying there.
- The coaster, which does not know it is rainingRails, brakes and a chain haul, running whatever the snow is doing. In a thaw week it is the only sledging in the village that is definitely happening, and it is close enough to the middle of town that it fills a gap rather than eating a day.
Two counters, one of them at the top of a gondola
Everything on this page can be decided on the morning. Equipment cannot, and we hold the contract with Bründl Sports in Kaprun directly rather than passing you to somebody else's counter.
- One shop in the village, at the valley station, a walk from a village bed and the same building the snowshoes come from.
- One shop high on the Kitzsteinhorn at the Alpincenter — the only shop on our estate that is not at valley level.
- A deposit now, the balance at the counter, with everybody's sizes on the system before the plane lands.
Ten minutes online now, instead of a queue on the first morning while the rest of the party is at the rink.
See both Kaprun shops →
What we read, and what we would not print
Activity lists for this village are longer than ours and vaguer. Here is where every line above came from, and the three things we found and left off.
- Every item came from the body that runs itThe summit complex, the ranger tours, the coaster and the ICE CAMP are off the lift company's own pages. The winter walking, the rinks, the toboggan register and the snowshoe hire points are off the regional tourist board's own registers. The spa is off its own website and so is the vehicle museum. Nothing here came from a review site or a travel aggregator, and there is no rating or review count anywhere on this page.
- No prices, no opening hours, no timetablesEvery one of them is set season by season and several of them are set week by week, and a guide carrying last winter's is worse than one carrying none. Where the shape of a thing genuinely changes your plan — that the ICE CAMP is a January-onwards attraction, that the ICE ARENA is a summer one, that the rink needs cold — we say the shape and send you to the operator for the day and the hour.
- What we will not claimWe have not worked a season in Kaprun; our Austrian seasons were Söll, Mayrhofen and Kitzbühel. So nothing above is written as though we did it last Tuesday, there is no view described from a platform we have not stood on, and where a source and a listing disagreed we have said so rather than picking the one that reads better.
- Three things we found and did not put on the pageA Guggenbichl toboggan run in Kaprun appears on several listings; it is not on the tourist board's current toboggan register and we could not reach a first-hand source, so we are not sending you up a hill on the strength of it. Horse-drawn sleigh rides are named by the board as an activity but we found no operator we could check, so there is no name here to ring. And Kaprun's own village museum publishes a winter timetable underneath a notice saying it is temporarily closed — we are not going to tell you it is open and we are not going to tell you it has gone.
Four pages, and two of them are ours to sell
A day off is the easy part of the week. These four are the decisions that shape the other six.
When the pass is the wrong ticket
Four different tickets are sold in this village and your dates pick one — including the sightseeing ticket a non-skier actually wants.
The huts you can reach without skis
Thirteen places to eat on the two mountains against a short handful in the village, and which of them a foot passenger can get to.
Booked before anybody packs
Two Bründl counters, ours by contract rather than by referral, with sizes held and a deposit rather than the full price today.
Landing in time to use the first day
Salzburg is 1h10-1h30 away and we run the transfer ourselves rather than reselling a seat.
The questions a non-skier asks first
What is there to do in Kaprun apart from skiing?
The summit complex on the Kitzsteinhorn, which a non-skier reaches by cable car on a sightseeing ticket, with two viewing platforms, a tunnel gallery through the rock and a cinema. The TAUERN SPA thermal resort on the edge of the village. The Maisi Flitzer alpine coaster in the town centre. Cleared valley walks around the Kapruner Moos and along the Salzach, snowshoe routes on the glacier, cross-country tracks at valley level, an outdoor ice rink at the entrance to the village, and a vintage vehicle museum for a wet afternoon.
Can a non-skier go up the Kitzsteinhorn?
Yes, and it is the best thing to do here without skis. The lift company sells a sightseeing ticket at the valley station rather than requiring a ski pass, and the cable cars take you to the summit complex the operator calls TOP OF SALZBURG. Two panoramic platforms, a lit gallery bored through the mountain to the second one with six information stations, a small cinema and a restaurant are all up there. Go on a clear day, because the platforms are the point and there is nothing to see from inside a cloud.
Can you use the TAUERN SPA if you are not staying there?
Yes. It sells day entry as well as rooms, and it runs every day of the year. It is a thermal resort rather than a hotel wellness room: its own site describes twenty thousand square metres of water and sauna world, indoors and out, with twelve pools, ten saunas and steam rooms, a separate children's area and a treatment side. Allow half a day at least. Austrian sauna areas are normally textile-free, so read the resort's house rules before you go if that matters to your party.
Is there a toboggan run in Kaprun?
Not a natural one in the village. What Kaprun has is the Maisi Flitzer alpine coaster next to the Maiskogelbahn valley station, which runs on rails all year and is not affected by the snow. The natural toboggan runs the regional tourist board lists are all elsewhere in the valley: Köhlergraben in Zell am See, Kohlschnait in Bruck, the very long floodlit run in the Wildkogel Arena at Bramberg, and snow tubing at Piesendorf. All of them mean a journey, and the toboggan hire points the board names are on the Zell side.
Where can you go winter walking in Kaprun?
The tourist board's own pick for Kaprun is a gentle circular walk through the Kapruner Moos, taking in the Filzmooswäldchen woods and field tracks along the Salzach. It is flat, cleared and needs only boots with grip. For something more alpine, the signed ICE CAMP Trail starts up at the Alpincenter on the Kitzsteinhorn and takes around half an hour each way on snowshoes. The board publishes a winter hiking map for the whole valley, and guided snowshoe hikes run on the region's weekly winter programme.
Is there ice skating in Kaprun?
Yes. There is an outdoor rink at the entrance to the village, which the tourist board describes as the family-friendly one of the region's rinks, and skates are hired on site. Ice hockey is possible there and curling can be arranged for a group. Being outdoor ice, it opens when the temperature allows and no operator guarantees a season, so ask locally on your first morning rather than promising it. The covered rink in Zell am See runs whatever the weather.
What is there to do in Kaprun when the weather is bad?
The thermal spa is the obvious one and it runs every day of the year. Vötter's vehicle museum in the village is indoors and its own site publishes winter opening from December through to Easter. The alpine coaster is on rails and runs in a thaw. The valley cross-country tracks are often clear and quiet when the mountain is not. The one outing to postpone is the summit, because the platforms are the reason to go up and a grey day takes them away.
Is Kaprun a good place for a non-skier for a whole week?
Better than most villages of its size, because the things a non-skier wants are here rather than a journey away: the spa, the coaster, the rink, the valley walks and the cross-country tracks are all in or beside the village, and the glacier summit is reached from the same gondola station as the skiers use. It is a quiet village rather than a town, so somebody wanting shops and a lively evening will want to know that the bus to Zell am See is a daytime service before they plan around it.
Has something on this page changed?
Attractions here open and close with the season and with the temperature, and three things are on this page as unresolved rather than confirmed. If a rink was running, a museum was shut, a toboggan run exists that we have left off, or an operator we could not verify turns out to be very much in business, tell us. Every message is read and checked before anything goes on the page.
Most of this you can decide on the morning
The spa, the rink, the coaster and the walks all take a decision at breakfast. Skis and boots take sizes, a shop and a date — two Bründl counters, booked with us directly, deposit now and the balance when you collect.
Book your Kaprun ski hire →