Looking for some ideas of good resorts in Austria

Reqs

Good snow at end of Jan / beg Feb (glacier based resorts?)
Decent amount of runs if just one mountain
Hotel / apartment for two
Quiet
No interest in apres ski nightlife but would want a reasonable selection of places to eat
Minimal queue bun fights
Happy to drive to resort if required

Ta in advance

Been to lots of places in Austria, my favourite in Europe for snowboarding. Obertauern is great, so is sallbach/ hinteglem.

Mayrhofen is fantastic but the gondola up sucks

Only time I’ve been snowboarding we went to the Stubai Glacier in Austria.
Stayed here: http://www.schoenherrhaus.at/en/news/#

and we had a hire car. It was about a 10-15 min drive in the morning.

Loved it. Would like to try it in the summer for some mountain biking.

Mayrhofen is fantastic but the gondola up sucks

+1

Mayehofen is like a mini Chamonix. Nightlife is excellent for a ski resort (although prob not much use for you).

Flachau is excellent too, some really nice restaurants and an interesting mountain (with access to the enormous wider area). Quiet in a good way.

I love Kitzbuhel – great ski area across 3 mountains, lovely town with plenty of places to eat, and it’s also great for a beer or two as well.

Plenty of accommodation available, and access to other ski areas as well. great fro driving between resorts, and not a ball ache because all the surrounding roads are comparatively low altitude, (and it’s austrian, so lift queues are tiny, and everything runs like clockwork)

Alternatively, have you thought about the dolomites? austrian precision and high quality lift systems, one of the biggest linked ski areas in the world, and an italian flair for the finer things in life, i.e. excellent food). Arabba also has a glacier.

I can’t quite remember, but I think Mayrhoffen is part of the zillertel arena? (sorry for the bad spelling) I remember we took the train to some other nearby resorts, and there were buses too. If you were driving you could drive between the resorts very easily (not that the trains and buses weren’t easy mind) and it would make for a really good varied week or two.

It smells like autumn where i am now. Not long till winter and some powder days. oh yes.

ST Anton is a world class resort and will a big ski area with different lift options you can get away from the crowds/queues. Its got plenty of lively apres-ski bars but you don’t have to frequent them. Lots of restaurants too if you chose not to go the half-board route in a hotel. You can pick a hotel/apartment a little way out of the centre and it will be quiet. The snow is excellent (end Jan/Feb is about the best time for snow in most ski resorts).

Yes St Manton is brilliant. Very expensive and very posh though

Yes St Manton is brilliant. Very expensive and very posh though

Crazy Kangeroo and Mooser Wirt 8) ? Very popular resort with students / youngsters who can arrive by train right to the town centre.

Aye, the area around St Anton is great. We stayed in St Christoph last year, smaller and a lot quieter but easy to get to St Anton itself or back from the Krazy Kangaroo. Loads of pistes, wide verity of runs etc.

We were there in Early Jan and the snow wasn’t great, a bit thin in places, but there’s a reason that the week we is the cheaper week! End of Jan should be guaranteed good snow.

Lots of places fit your description.
You won’t need glaciers at that time of the year either.
We usually do either Austria or Italy, flying into Munich and hiring car from there and booking hotels independently. These are my thoughts on some of the places I’ve been to:
– Ischgl is brilliant but maybe a bit lively and a bit pricey
– St Anton is also brilliant but pricier and livelier.
– Mayrhofen town is busy and full of Brits but there are other smaller resorts accessing the pistes by quieter lifts. (Lanersback and Finkenberg are good examples, quieter, cheaper, less queuing)

– Sankt Johann in Tirol is very good, not a massive resort but close to many other good ones on the same liftpass. We often stay at Kirchberg (very quiet) and do an assortment of nearby resorts.
– Kitzbuhel is also accessible from there. (Town itself is expensive but pistes good).
– Waidring (Steinplatte) is also accessible from Kirchberg by car and worth skiing.

Also consider going over the Brenner pass to Kronplatz in Italy. Quiet village resorts that require car or bus access to pistes but loads of ultra-modern lift capacity and perfectly managed pistes. Never queued more than a couple of minutes at any lift in peak season! We’ve been back about 10 times now.

Places to eat – I think Tirolean food is about as good as it gets. You won’t struggle to find good food anywhere.

Gastein valley is worth looking at – two smaller areas and two much larger areas spread out up and down the length of the valley

late jan to early feb is prime season, no need to go for a glacier at that time of year

Went to Lech earlier this year – really nice if a bit posh!

Ewan,
The locals’ saying is that you take your wife to Lech, your mistress to Zurs and your skis to St Anton

Went to Mayrhofen a few years ago and really enjoyed it.

We stayed in a small quiet village just outside Mayrhofen called Schwendau and walked (about 10 minutes) to the horbergbahn bubble to go up the mountain.

Austria you say?

G’Day Mate, Let’s put another shrimp on the barbie.

Skiwelt area. Stay in Soll. Absolutely massive ski area, 1.5 hours from Munich airport where car hire is cheap and easy. Absolutely massive ski area and really flexible and cheap accommodation of a high standard without being 5* luxury.

Get the first flight out and you can be skiing by lunchtime. Lufthansa will take skis for free still if you ask.

Also been to Solden, kitzbuhel and Gerlos in Austria. I’m not so keen on Kitz as the wind seems to close some important lifts making it hard to link up or avoid queues.

I would suggest Alpbach, it fits all your requirements, no major Apres ski, plenty of runs now it has a connection to Wildshonau and easy enough to get to from with Munich or Innsbruck airports.

You can find all the links on the Alpbach website http://www.alpbach.at. There are plenty of Hotels / Pensions on there to choose from.

Cheers for the replies folks. 8)

The missus used to go to Hoch Solden many many years ago. I’ve only ever skied in North America so am used to empty slopes, English as a 1st language (if you know what I mean :wink:) and small quaint hills.

I’ll ping her the list of suggestions above^^^ to do some further research.

St Anton is the best Austrian resort I’ve been to – other good stuff nearby too. It is more expensive but not ridiculous – Austria generally is pretty reasonable IMO.

St Johann mentioned above is a small but cute resort which is really reasonable and links with other nearby places on buses.

Mayrhofen is a fun town but the skiing isn’t that amazing IMO. Preferred Zell am Ziller down the road.

We go to Austria every winter with the family and we usually try a different resort each time. My favourite so far is Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis. That’s three towns/villages joined and the range of pistes is huge and easily accessible. The towns are pretty high up so you can ski practically to the car even in late season and the prices are generally reasonable for Austria. Saalbach Hinterglemm is also good as you can hook up with both towns as well as over the mountain to Leogang but it has become very expensive and very popular with that certain ostentatious crowd (the apres ski scene there is also huge). Waidring is OK but a bit small and after two days you have been on all the pistes and the one cable car up from the car park means there are long queues at the beginning and end of the day although you can use other ski areas but it meant a 60 min bus journey there and back. My in laws went to Ischgl and they really rated it. Zillertal is also good but again the popúlar resorts like Kaltenbach and Mayrhofen can resemble the M25 on the pistes especially in the winter holidays (early Feb).

Saalbach Hinterglem is my favourite resort.

I always stay at Pension Enzian about 30m away from the main schattberg express lift. Great hotel and amazing reviews on trip advisor.

Mayrhofen is fantastic but the gondola up sucks

You obviously never used the old Cable Car! The “new” gondola is incredible by comparison 😉

I lived in Mayrhofen for 10 years and I love it. The Zillertal ski area is massive and has some brilliant skiing. Mayrhofen town is a busy place, but there are plenty of options nearby if you want a bit quieter but still access the same ski area (as mentioned above) Hippach/Scwendau, Lannersbach/Eggalm, Finkenberg. All lovely villages with plenty happening but quieter than in town.

The zillertalbahn train from Mayhofen centre links to loads of other skiing down the valley really easily, as does the bus service, and it’s all free (and no hassle)

Zell am Ziller down the road could be a good option, lovely skiing there and a great little town, Kaltenbach is much the same although slightly smaller, Fugen and Hoch Fugen also have brilliant skiing.

The area is large and varied and all available on one ski pass, well worth a look I reckon.

You obviously never used the old Cable Car! The “new” gondola is incredible by comparison

Tremendous !

I skied a lot in Austria in my 20’s (so mid 1980’s) including Kitzbuhel, Sol, Mayerhoffen and one of the reasons I’ve never been back to anywhere really other than St Anton was the enormous queues at the ancient cable cars out of the towns. I appreciate its probably a bit different now

It’s a lot different yes. The old cable car was ridiculous, the queue was so large to come back down in school holidays the FlugTaxi service would fly people down on tandem paragliders and come back up the empty lift for the next customer!!

The new one is a 15 person Gondola (something like 2000/hour ?) so no problem these days.

Yep, I remember the chalk board queue length signs outside the old Penken cablecar – 1hr, 2hr, 3hr all the way down the main street. The “new” gondola is fine outside of dutch/ruissian/brit holiday time. During that time you get the bus to the Horbergbhan or up the valley to Finkenberg and walk straight on to the lift.

There was talk of another lift going in at some point. This might explain the otherwise inexplicably over-engineered Kombibhan – that or Doppelmayr had a load of bits left over from somehwere else.

Edit: in German, but yes, it’s on the way

When skiroute 1 is open (and even when it’s closed but still snow covered at the bottom) you use that as the way off the hills. Old skiroute 2 (from the bottom of Katzenmoose) is now gone, but you can still retrace its route down to Finkenberg. It’s damned narrow and occasionally flat on a board though.

Been to Mayrhofen, St Anton, Kitzbuhel but Kaprun was my favorite as quite small town, glacier nearby and we had good snow.

Prefer Austria to France and has always felt quite and more family friendly. Bar the 1 large Arnie type chap who skied over my board in a lift queue to skip it and didn’t appreciate the punch to the kidneys I gave him. Even got an apology of sorts.

Yep, I remember the chalk board queue length signs outside the old Penken cablecar – 1hr, 2hr, 3hr all the way down the main street.

Luckily for me, as a “local” there was a back door that went straight onto the loading area so we never had to queue 😉

The “new” gondola is fine outside of dutch/ruissian/brit holiday time.

There was large sums of money (and an adaptation to the original plans) to make sure the lift spewed 2000 out people an hour, right outside the Sport Hotel Eis Bar 🙂

(That’s why there is a corner in the middle of the Gondola route)

Check out Fiss
You might need to DIY as no Uk tour operators go there .
Second Kaprun as well, enjoyed it there .

I’ve been to st Anton, stubai, Innsbruck and soll. My favorite has to be soll. St Anton has a better advanced skiing area and brilliant après, but soll has a more chilled out atmosphere. Some nice pubs and restaraunt a and it’s very well priced. The ski area is quite low but when the snow conditions are good, they’re good. Not much vertical in the runs but the area is massive so you will be kept busy for the whole week.

Been to Ellmau twice. All good and Austria tends to be more picturesque as oppose to some of the purpose built French resorts but to be honest we ski from the first lift to the last so conditions are the most important thing for us

Just to resurrect this again.

Mrs A has come up with Lech, St Anton, St Johann and I’ll lob in Fiss. I suspect the 1st two are quite posh (and expensive)!

Preference is to do this as a package for convenience though that may rule out Fiss.

Any other thoughts from the collective?

Schladming.

Thanks to the Ski World Cup it has a very modern lift system and nice facilities (like reasonably priced ski lockers at the bottom of the main lift complete with clean warm changing rooms).

http://www.schladming-dachstein.at/en/holiday-activities/winter