What exactly is Walk? Where does it come from? How is it manufactured? What really makes it so special? Well gladly 
tell you more about it, but first a little about its history:

In the Stone Age people already used the fur and skin of an 
animal for clothing. And at a very early time in history lambswool 
played a central role because it was safe, available in large 
quantities, and easy to process. It was early in the stone age 
when people began to spin animal fur. It became easier and 
easier over the centuries to transform sheeps wool into spun 
wool as the spinning process developed from the simple hand 
turned spindle ( 13th C.), to the foot pedal spinning wheel 
(16th C.), to the spinning machines of modern times (18th C.).

In parallel with this, ancient Egyptians discovered that wool 
could be felted by foot-stomping it in troughs filled with water, 
urine, or sodium. There was even a hieroglyphic for it: a pair of 
feet standing in liquid.

Later the nations of the north followed suit. They stomped 
material with their feet or mortars in receptacles filled with 
warm water and added urine and sheep manure or peat and 
Walk earth from volcanic rock to the material.

From the 12th century on, the felting of wool was taken over 
more and more by mills. The Walk mill was set in motion by a 
water wheel consisting of boards laid on top of each other like 
roof tiles, with large wooden hammers pounding the fabric in a 
Walk trough for 18 hours. The result was a shrinking of the fabric 
up to 50% in length and width.

According to Alpine tradition, Walk, as we know it from the 
traditional Tyrolean national costume, was "discovered" by the 
alpine farmers. It is probable that it was discovered by chance 
when they washed felted pieces of woolen clothing and noticed 
they became more weather-resistant and even more comfortable 
than they were before. From then on they also used the Walk 
technology to make knit clothing more weather resistant and 
durable, since the Walk process added to the advantages 
already found in sheeps wool.

At this time we would like to answer the often posed question 
about the difference between loden and Walk. Both are made 
primarily from sheeps wool which has been felted by the effects 
of heat and water. The main difference is that knit wool is felted 
to make Walk and woven wool is felted to make loden.