Höhe Tauern National Park, Austria

The Höhe Tauern (High Tauern) range is the highest mountain range in the eastern Alps, and forms the backbone of Austria. It is a high wild zone, cut by inhabited low valleys and fringed by ski resorts (we stayed at Zell-am-See for a wonderful week of skiing and exploring). It is the silent, snow-glistening realm of golden eagles, ibexes and lynxes, of groves of fir and larch, of rushing glacial green rivers, a wild heart in the centre of Europe.