The Bavarian Alps month by month — at a glance
Hover each month for the summary. Click to pin it.
In most mountain destinations the season is set by the lifts and the hotels. In the Bavarian Alps there is a calendar older than any of that, and it is still in charge: the cattle's. They go up in spring, spend the summer high and come down in mid-September, and much of the mountain infrastructure organises itself around those two dates.
01 A hundred days of pasture
The system is old and still works for a purely arithmetical reason: an Alpine valley does not grow enough grass to keep cattle on the valley floor all year. So as soon as the snow retreats the animals go up to pastures that only exist for a few months, and the valley forage is saved for winter.
The scale is bigger than it looks. In Bavaria alone there are 1,384 high pastures carrying around 48,000 head of cattle. The ascent is staged: first to the mid-slope meadows and then, in summer, to the high pastures. At the end of September the movement reverses and the animals return to the low meadows before going into the barn.
Key moments at a glance
Clean air, fewer storms than July and the cattle coming down. Everything stays open until the cows do.
The cattle reach the high pastures and the huts open with them. Meadows in flower and far fewer people.
Neither winter nor summer: huts closed, lifts idle and rotten snow in the valley.
Empty pastures, almost everything closed and the snow not yet settled. The worst month of the year.
02 The huts close behind the cows
Here is the practical consequence that spoils most trips. Many of the huts and pasture houses serving food in the mountains operate in the same period as the cattle, because historically they were the same thing: the place where whoever looked after the animals lived. When the herd comes down, the house shuts.
That means a mountain route planned for early October can find that the place where you expected to eat or sleep has been closed for a fortnight. It is not a closure for lack of custom: the season has ended according to a calendar that does not depend on tourism.
In these valleys the season is not opened by a brochure. It is opened by the first animal going up and closed by the last one coming down.
03 How to read a descent
On descent day the herds come down the valley road to an enclosure where the animals are sorted and each returns to its owner. It is a festive day with a market, food and crowds in the street, and in many valleys it is the event of the year.
And here is the detail worth knowing so as not to misread what you see. If the summer has gone well and no animal has died or been seriously injured, the herd comes down decorated with flowers, ribbons and bells, led by a garlanded cow. If something has gone wrong, even with a single animal, the descent is made without decoration and without celebration.
In other words: the decoration is not a show staged for onlookers. It is a report on the summer, legible from the pavement. A herd coming down plainly in front of a whole village is communicating something specific, and that changes entirely how you stand there watching.
04 The two dead months
From the existence of two seasons — the grass one and the snow one — follows something almost no guide says clearly: there are two gaps in the year when the Bavarian mountains offer very little. April and November.
In April the snow is rotten at low altitude, the lifts have closed and the pastures have not opened. In November the pastures are already empty, the huts are closed and the snow has not settled. In both cases many mountain businesses take their annual break.
They are not forbidden months: the valleys are still there, the villages function and prices are at rock bottom. But go knowing the plan will be a valley one rather than a high one, and check one by one the places you want to visit.
05 The other calendar, the snow one
The second calendar occupies the gap the first one leaves. The snow season runs roughly December to March, with February the most reliable month at mid altitude. It is a more capricious calendar than the cattle's, because it depends on a factor no tradition controls: the altitude at which the snow settles each winter.
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It is also worth remembering that the Alps are only a narrow strip in the south of the state. The rest of Bavaria — the Alpine Foreland, the Danube valley, the plateaus and forests of the north — runs on a far more conventional calendar, with a long season from April to October and none of those gaps.
06 How to pick the week
If you are going for the mountains, September is the best month of the year: the air is cleaner than in summer, there are fewer afternoon storms than in July, everything is still open, and it coincides with the cattle descents. June is the second option and usually works out considerably cheaper than August.
If you want to see a Viehscheid, pick the valley before the date and check it early: each locality has its own and they are fixed, so they can be planned a year ahead. Go early, because the herd comes down in the morning and by mid-afternoon there is nothing left to see.
And if April or November is your only possible date, change the altitude rather than cancelling. The valleys, the lakes and the northern cities work the same all year, and these are months when you find accommodation at prices that do not exist in August.
Daniel Lu In Nara the calendar is set by fifteen hundred deer, and part of it is a safety warning
Frisia Orientalis In the Veneto it rains more in summer than in winter, the opposite of postcard Italy
Fosterand sons