Ski safari in Austria – Schladming / Ski Amadè

on a tour through Austria. Discover with him Austria’s hidden gems. This time he is skiing in Ski Amadé. 
“Day 6 of the Austrian Ski Tour began with the retrieval of the trusty BMW from an Alpendorf hillside where we had had to abandon it three evenings before with the endless snow and mammouth drive from Bregenzerwald. We were sad to leave the Salzburger Sportwelt, all of its villages covered by the extensive Ski Amadé pass. Tree skiing is always ‘good for the soul’ and there were still plenty of nearby ski areas left to explore – Grossarl, Gasteinertal, Hochkoenig, Kleinarl and Zauchensee. With light overnight snow, the pistes were never going to be in better condition.

We somewhat reluctantly accepted that we’re just going to have to put those resorts on the list for next winter! That’s the beauty of Austrian skiing. There are so many resorts in so many different parts of Austria; some suitable for a day, some perfect for a long weekend and some to keep you busy all week. But what Austria offers over and above any other country is a consistently good welcome, excellent service, classy family-run hotels, huts that serve decent food in beautiful surroundings and a lift and snowmaking infrastructure that has been upgraded and rivals anywhere these days.

Half-board in an Austria hotel is significantly better value than in some other countries, no-one teaches skiing better than the Austrians and skiing is so much more than just bashing the miles out on bland motorway pistes above the treeline in sterile, purpose-built ski sprawls.

Enough of my evangelism…

We dropped onto the Bischofshofen motorway and took the A10 to Radstadt, leaving Salzburgerland and on into the fourth Austrian Bundesland of the trip, Steiermark or Styria. The heavy snow returned and by the time we’d managed the short drive to Schladming-Dachstein, the wind had picked up and the visibility had closed in for the day. We gently coaxed the car up to the village of Rohrmoos, scattered about a mile above Schladming set on its own plateau (Alm, Moos – whatever you want to call it!). We gratefully decamped to the new arx-genusshotel, a stylish designer hotel run with considerable skill by the Veith family. Comfortable rooms, a good kitchen and a simple modern spa area.

Rohrmoos is ski convenient, if a little quiet, and set on the lower slopes of the Hochwurzen. Schladming’s two home mountains, Planai (1,894m) and Hochwurzen (1,850m), are sandwiched between Reiteralm (1,960m) and Hauser Kaibling (2,015m), creating a four-mountain, interlinked skier’s paradise, also covered by the Ski Amade pass. Most of the slopes are northfacing so it can be a bit chilly but the snow stays good and you’re well protected by mainly tree lined runs.
The Austrian ski team train on the Reiteralm and it was here Hermann Maier ‘racetuned’ in secret, before announcing his miraculous comeback in 2003, after his near leg amputation in a motorcycle accident (Read the brilliant book ‘Race of my Life’). Schladming offers some of the longest uninterrupted runs in Europe, like the 4.6km FIS run and the endless 7.7km Hochwurzen Valley run right by the hotel.

We skied windswept Planai rather begrudgingly in snow on the Saturday, nipping into the many mountain restaurants to thaw out. Our patience was eventually rewarded with blue skies on Sunday and ‘the day of days’ on the Reiteralm, albeit at

-12 degrees. Nothing that plenty of layers, fast skiing and several more hut stops could not fix. We consumed a tremendous Tiroler Groestl, freshly prepared, at the Eiskarhuette on the way down from Reiteralm on red 1! The views over to the Dachstein were just ‘to die for’.

Monday brought unbelievable piste conditions on Planai, warmer temperatures and very few skiers! However, we spent most of the day on Hauser Kaibling, our favourite of the four Schladming mountains, as well as being the highest. It has bags of new lift investment, a brilliant black FIS run 1a to the base gondola in Haus and just so many pistes for ‘ripping it’. We tried the Stoecklhuette hut for a traditional Styrian Kasknoch’n, made with some mighty fine regional cheese. The fresh local Schladminger Beer is worth some study too!

Schladming is an absolute ‘must ski’ resort in any keen skier’s lifetime. It is little surprise that it has been selected to host the 2013 World Ski Championships next February. We had to drag ourselves from the slopes at the end of the ski day.”





original on treasures.austria.info