A document from 1563 grants 18 farms from the upper Schnalstal valley the right to graze 177 cattle and 1037 sheep in the Niedertal valley. However, this Niedertal lies on the Venter side, in the uppermost Oetztal. To get there, the cattle had to be driven over the Niederjoch, over which sheep today can only be brought with difficulty, not to mention large cattle. So the Niederjoch must not have been iced over at the time, otherwise the magnanimous righteousness would have been sheer nonsense, to say the least. At that time and even earlier, the Jöcher were even more remote, as can be seen from the fact that, to give just a few examples, Vent belonged to the parish of Tschars, later to Unserfrau in Schnalstal and to the court of Kastelbell, Zwieselstein in Oetztal to the parish of St. Leonhard in Passeier.

From: Brixener Chronik, newspaper for the Catholic people, number 186, Friday 17 August 1917

Excerpt from the article “The South Tyrolean climate in earlier times”