Driving to Gerlos: the Zillertal approach and the alpine road toll
Do I have to pay the Gerlos Alpine Road toll to reach Gerlos?
No, and in the ski season nobody pays it. Grossglockner Hochalpenstrassen AG, which levies the toll, says the Gerlos Alpine Road is used free of charge during winter ski operation. Outside that period the charge still misses you on the way in: the tolled part is a twelve kilometre route from Krimml up to Pinzgauer Höhe with its cash point at Oberkrimml on the Salzburg side, so an approach from Zell am Ziller reaches the village without touching it. The one thing you do need is a vignette for the A12, from the Kufstein-Süd junction to the Zillertal exit.
In the ski season the alpine road is free
Grossglockner Hochalpenstrassen AG runs the Gerlos Alpine Road, and its own prices and opening hours page says the road is open 365 days a year with no stated seasonal closure and is used free of charge during the winter ski operation. Annual pass holders get no refund for that free period, which is the operator telling you the free period is real.
A skier crossing the pass in February therefore pays the road nothing at all. The toll is a question for a trip made outside ski operation, and even then it is a question about which direction you drive.
Where the toll gate actually is
The operator describes the charged part as a twelve kilometre route from Krimml up to Pinzgauer Höhe, and puts its cash point at Oberkrimml 122 in Krimml, on the Salzburg side of the Gerlos Pass.
The road in from Zell am Ziller reaches Gerlos from the Tyrolean side and stops well short of that. You meet the toll gate only by carrying on over the pass and down towards Krimml, which is a day out into the Pinzgau. If you make that day out in summer, a day ticket for the Grossglockner High Alpine Road earns a reduced fare on the Gerlos road the same day, under the operator's own combined pricing.
A12 to the Zillertal exit, then two federal roads
From Germany the drive runs down the A12 Inntal Autobahn to the Zillertal exit, then the B169 Zillertaler Straße to Zell am Ziller, then about 18 km on the B165 Gerlos-Bundesstraße to the village.
The vignette obligation opens at Kufstein-Süd, where the A12's exempt border stretch ends, and closes when you leave at the Zillertal exit. The B169 and the B165 are ordinary federal roads and carry no vignette requirement of their own.
One short motorway leg each way is all the charged driving a normal week contains. If the trip is a single day's crossing and nothing more, a 1-day Austrian vignette answers it; for a stay with an outward and a return drive, a 10-day vignette is the shape that fits.
Width and weight on the last stretch
A standing order of the Bezirkshauptmannschaft Schwaz, most recently reissued on 30 November 2007, bans vehicles over 18 tonnes and any motor vehicle towing a trailer wider than 2 metres from the B165 between road-km 43.14 and 57.55, in both directions. Local agricultural and timber traffic bound for Gerlos or Hainzenberg is excepted. A car towing a wide box trailer or a caravan is inside that ban, and a heavy vehicle needs another way round entirely.
Inside the village there is nothing comparable. Gerlos publishes no car-free centre, no one-way system and no access ban of the kind some Tyrolean resorts operate, so the width of what you are towing is the only thing on this approach that can turn a car back. None of it changes the Austrian vignette options you make for the motorway leg.