While Lech draws most if its visitors during the winter for its famous “White Ring,” the largest connected ski area of Austria, these same 190 miles of trails transform into the “Green Ring” in summer, when they are a paradise for nature lovers.

The Rufikopf Geo Trail is particularly noteworthy for the 200 million-year-old shell fossils that are preserved in the rocks here, and once lined the ocean floor. Indagare can help arrange a hike to see the fossils, lakes and glaciers with an expert guide. For a longer, multi-day hiking adventure, the 77-mile Lechweg River Trail runs along the turquoise Lech River from Vorarlberg to Bavaria, Germany. Popular sites to visit along the Lechweg Trail are the Highline 179 Suspension Bridge and Tirol Lech Nature Park.

What makes Lech such a great winter experience is that skiers can purchase the Arlberg card, a single lift pass for the entire region that encompasses more than 160 miles of slopes and 111 miles of deep-snow runs. Advanced skiers should arrange to have a private instructor bring them off piste, to take full advantage of all the mountain has to offer. An iconic ski day: complete the White Ring, one of the Alp’s most legendary ski circuits that links Lech, Zurs, Zug and Oberlech over 13 miles of the most scenic runs.

The famous American land artist James Turrell fell in love with the Arlberg area on a visit in 2014 and decided that its mountain terrain would be a perfect place for one of his Skyspace projects. It took the town a number of years to gain approval and raise funds, but the inground “Light Room” opened in 2018.

Dug into the side of a mountain in Oberlech, the “sensing room” (a stone-surrounded circular space with a round aperture open to the air in the ceiling and stone walls with benches for viewing) is reached via a 35-foot tunnel dug into the earth.

The space is open to the public daily, but is best seen at sunrise and sunset, when the Turrell light show runs. The opening to the sky remains open when the weather is not inclement; so one can take a small hike from Oberlech or ski down to the Skyspace at any time to experience “the Ganzfeld effect,” a sensory deprivation phenomenon that can induce hallucinations. For the greatest effect, one should book tickets for the hour-long light show timed each day to start one-hour before sunset. The artist hoped that the space would challenge visitors to consider such questions as whether the sky is really blue; how optical illusions impact our senses and what our relationship to the sky is. As Turrell has said, “We are not aware that we ourselves give the sky its colors.”