Chris Gill and Dave Watts, the editors of Where to Ski and Snowboard – Britain’s leading ski resort guide – are just back from a tour of half a dozen resorts in SalzburgerLand and Styria, described by Chris as “the snowiest week I’ve had in the Alps in years”. We invited Chris to tell us a bit about the trip. Below is the result; for more detail, go to the WTSS blog.
The trip got off to a flying start (on Thursday 11 March) in more ways that one: we repeated our standard Salzburg trick of getting the first flight of the day, changing in to ski gear at the airport and driving south for half an hour to get half a day’s skiing in the three-valley Salzburger Skiwelt Amadè area (which is unjustly neglected by the UK travel trade).
Last time, we started at the eastern end, in Flachau, and skied between there and the central resort, Wagrain. This time we started at the western end, in Alpendorf. We had a great afternoon, in the course of which light snowfall started. The snowfall was to continue, on and off, for the following five days.
The neat thing about this region south of Salzburg is that you can tour a whole string of excellent, extensive resorts with hardly any driving – and practically all of them covered by the marvellous Ski Amadé regional lift pass. Next stop: Bad Hofgastein, our base for two days in the Gastein valley. The hotel Bismarck proved very satisfactory, with exceptional half-board food and charming owners and staff.
Friday we spent exploring the slopes above the main resorts of Bad Hofgastein and Bad Gastein, starting the day enjoying perfect powder-on-piste runs on Schlossalm and finishing it doing repeated off-piste runs from Stubnerkogel into the Angertal. The snowfall faded in the afternoon, but was back with a vengeance on Saturday – despite which we managed to explore the high, treeless Sportgastein sector before moving down the valley to the more sheltered slopes of Dorfgastein and Grossarl, over in the next valley.
Another short drive took us to Hinterthal in the Hochkönig area, another excellent but internationally neglected area – our hosts, Elevation Holidays, are one of only a handful of firms operating here. On Sunday the plan was to ski to Mühlbach at the eastern end of the area and then all the way to Maria Alm, 17km away to the west. We again had abundant fresh, light snow in the morning – including fabulous knee-deep glades in the woods above Dienten – though the snowfall faded by the time we got to Maria Alm’s Aberg slopes.
But by the time we drove into Obertauern in the evening, the snow had started again, and by the time we had checked out the nightlife after dinner a minor storm was in progress. This was not good news in a resort that is 1000m higher than most resorts around here, and virtually treeless. Sure enough, on Monday the visibility was dreadful, and we soon bailed out and headed down to Schladming. And we made the right call: on the wooded slopes of Fageralm and Reiteralm we had the best afternoon of the week, in superb light powder on and beside the pistes.
Probably the heaviest snow of the week fell on Tuesday – but it was the heaviest in both senses, so the skiing wasn’t quite in the same league as Friday to Monday. But I’m being picky now – Friday to Monday had been simply superb. All in all, it was the snowiest week I’ve had in the Alps in years.
original on treasures.austria.info
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