Umhausen

Altitude: 1,031 m a.s.l.

The municipality is made up of the component localities Umhausen, Tumpen, Köfels, Farst, Niederthai and Östen. Once upon a time, it represented the centre for flax cultivation, today, however, it is a popular holiday resort featuring a climbing garden and a bathing lake. Here, the ancient Carnival tradition of the "Larchzieh'n" is still cherished, when a 35 m larch trunk is drawn throughout the village. Today it takes place every four to five years, whereas once upon a time it was only celebrated if no bachelor married in Umhausen that year...

The village has got some peculiarities to offer, such as the Köfels rock-slide, whose gneiss some 8,000 years ago was transformed by pressure and heat into a glass-like rock, the so-called Köfelsit. Moreover, in the Nineties Umhausen was in the media for its natural inert gas radon: This reveals, that all requirements for healing chronic rheumatic diseases and also for pain-killing treatments are there - the health resort was inaugurated some years ago.

Two remarkable sights, both located at the foot of the Stuiben Waterfall, are the Umhausen Birds of Prey Park which invites you to a flight demonstration in its open-air arena, and the Oetzi Village. The latter, an outdoor museum, is dedicated to the famous Iceman. In winter, however, Umhausen offers several toboggan runs and cross-country ski tracks, including the snow-sure high-altitude trail "Sonnenplateau", snaking at 1,550 m a.s.l. in the hamlet of Niederthai.