The best walks and hikes around Damüls

Nice stopover on the way to Sünser Spitze

One of the eye-catchers in this area: the mountain range runs almost all around and despite the high location there are midsummer days suitable for swimming

The Seven Hills Trail (11.7 km, 480 m elevation gain, approx. 4 hours) is a stunning loop hike! The first 1.5 km climbs directly beneath the chairlift, giving your lungs and climbing legs a real workout. But once you reach the top, it's three to four hours of pure bliss. What makes it so special? The view of mighty peaks all around you? The winding paths that gently ascend and descend? Or the scent of the lush green vegetation? It's simply everything. Every bend reveals a new landscape: babbling mountain streams, colorful fields of flowers, steep slopes, and much more. You'll be captivated. We hiked it in the summer, and the heat made it quite challenging. If you're sensitive to that (like me), then leave early in the morning. That way, you'll get the most out of this beautiful hike. Highly recommended!

There's an inn here with a large panoramic restaurant and sun terrace. Along the road, there's a smaller building with a terrace.

The square is also home to one of the famous swings in the Damüls region. https://www.damuels.at/de/walsertal/das-land-der-schaukeln.html

At some point, the path begins to tell its own story. Perhaps after the third hill, when your view has become accustomed to the expanse, or after the sixth, when your legs feel heavier but your heart lighter. The Seven Hills Trail isn't one of those marked triumphal paths, not a summit selfie spot with guaranteed mountain hut fun. It's a quiet, wild, almost wise-looking ridge path – one that promises nothing but delivers everything. In the golden light of late summer, the grass looks like time turned inside out. Dry, rough, scoured by the wind. The path winds over boggy hilltops and rugged ridges, past gnarled spruce trees that stand like silent border posts between valleys and heavens. Those who walk here leave the familiar behind for a few hours. On the left, the view down into the Damüls basin, on the right, wanderlust as far as the Arlberg, and somewhere in between, the inner compass readjusts. The wind carries stories—from the Portlahorn, perhaps, or the Elsenkopf. Old stones don't talk much, but they remember who's been here. Some hikers walk with dogs, others with hats. Some talk, others are silent. Everyone becomes quieter the further they go. And that's a good thing. In the evening, when the shadows of the hills fall over the last few meters of the path, you know you haven't just been for a stroll. You've been on the move—outside and within yourself. Anyone who has climbed all seven hills has found more than just the way back.

Deeply embedded in the hilly, melancholy highlands lies Lake Sünser See, like a mystery no one can explain. No shore beckoning for a swim, no jetty that becomes a postcard – only this dark mirror, round like a point of thought. You look down, and the lake looks back. A silent understanding develops between man and landscape, hard to name, but easy to feel. All around, the green spreads out like a tired cloak, crisscrossed by paths that no one hurries along. Up here, silence becomes space, and space becomes something that seems almost sacred. Those who sit down stay longer than planned. And those who leave take something with them that needs no name.

There are paths that don't simply go from A to B – they go to the border between inside and outside. The Hochblanken ridge is such a path. It winds through meadows, past rocky outcrops, and suddenly the world opens up. Not spectacularly. But quietly. Your gaze sweeps like a tired bird over valleys and hills, groping its way along the contours of the Vorarlberg Alps, lingering on an alpine hut, on the edges of cliffs, on the dark patches of forest. Up here, there's no shouting. No posting. Here, you look – and perhaps marvel. At the peace, at the balance of things, at what no longer needs to be explained. The wind carries nothing with it except the suspicion that everything could be different. And that's precisely why you stop, look back once more, say nothing – and then move on. Because what else can you say when, for a moment, the world lies so completely before you?