Via ferrata is currently trending, with new routes popping up like mushrooms and more people getting excited about the experience of climbing steep rock faces. There is a noticeable dual development of so-called sport via ferratas and those with a more or less pronounced alpine character. This book deliberately focuses on the latter, more classic category, and does not reduce the routes solely to their iron content and purely sporting elements, but also highlights the entire experience in the sense of a grand mountain tour: a return to the roots, so to speak, when via ferratas were less about self-indulgence and extreme difficulty. Author Mark Zahel has compiled a kind of best-of collection of alpine via ferratas from the entire Eastern Alps region, featuring 70 well-developed tours with more than 100 individual climbs.