After 3 days based in Brixen to ski the Kitzbuhel and SkiWelt areas, we moved to Saalbach Tuesday evening. James referred to Saalbach as the “Vail of the Tirol,” and that seems accurate in relation to the prior areas being more like Summit County. Saalbach slope maintenance seems a little better and the other resorts are more weekend concentrated as they are closer to Munich and Salzburg. Saalbach also gets more snow, though it too has a low altitude range of 3,000 – 6,600. However a 3-DAY lift ticket at Saalbach costs a very un-Vail-like 147 Euros. We are also staying at the 4-star Alpinresort for about $400/night, which includes all meals, wine with dinner and lavish spa facilities.

A couple of British skiers have commented on Austria being a better value with more amenities than the French resorts. We also see why many people say ski infrastructure in Austria is the best in the world. Most of the lifts are high speed gondolas or 6-pack chairs, a few with heated seats. When pistes take you to a gondola loading at a higher level there is often an elevator or escalator to get you there. And this is another huge ski complex with snowmaking coverage on most of the pistes.

Liz has some knee issues after numerous ski days, and the six consecutive in the Arlberg were pushing it. So here she decided to take a break after 3 days, with another 3 coming. Today was the 7th consecutive day of clear, calm weather. High temps were just above freezing up high but colder in the valleys with similar inversion as in the Kitzbuhel area. It is expected to remain sunny with temps warming more starting Friday.

It’s about a 5 minute walk to the Schattberg Expess gondola from the hotel. My first run was the #1 black piste to its mid-station, and I was pleased to see almost none of the slick snowmaking subsurface. I moved onto the Sprinter lift to Schattberg West. View down to Saalbach from there:


View SW to Zwolferkogel, where I headed after a long run down to Hinterglemm.


View across the valley to the broad south facing slopes from Hochalm to Reiterkogel.


I skied 3 runs in the east facing Zwolferkogel area, including one on Saalbach’s last upper mountain T-bar.


I then skied the long piste #14 down to the upper end of the valley, then oide up the other side to the Hochalm area. It was just after noon now and this area was quite busy, both on the slopes and in the 3 restaurants. In Saalbach the north facing slopes tend to be forested with just a few relatively long pistes cut through them. The south slopes are more wide open so there was plenty of room. At noon the snow was very forgiving, soft but not really a melt-freeze. South facing off-piste is an ugly mess, but the groomers were in great shape so it was easy to understand why Hochalm was popular. Here’s a closer view of Hochalm at left in this pic taken from the other side of the valley.

Moving to the right in that pic there are 3 more high south facing lifts ending with Sunliner, which provides access to Fieberbrunn.

Fieberbrunn was a separate area but gondolas were installed in 2014 to connect the areas. Fieberbrunn is noted for its off piste, this face off the Hochalmspitze being a good example.

Fieberbrunn hosts a Freeskiing Tour event in March.

There are several skiroutes off Fieberbrunn’s backside.


Closer view in profile:


At 2PM I hoped that the sun being on it all day would soften the snow, so I ventured onto skiroute 34.


Only the short upper section, east facing and shaded by rocks, had decent chalk. The sunny slopes were only partially soft and not consolidated. In North America there would usually be a decent skier-packed line in terrain like this, but the terrain is so expansive and skier traffic is too low to pack down a decent line. Fortunately skiroute 34 has a zigzag narrow catwalk, so I bailed out to that about halfway down.

I went back up the gondola to ski into Fieberbrunn’s north facing front side. I skied F10 to a short connector gondola, then F1c to the base. The lower runs are like Sallbach’s north facing, cut through dense forest. The return lift out of Fiberbrunn was a pulse gondola similar to La Grave’s. There are 4 or 5 gondolas clustered together, and they come to a stop when loading and unloading like a tram.

It’s now close to 3:30 but the return pistes on backside Fieberbrunn and Sallbach to the hotel are still mostly in the sun. State of the art snowmaking extends to the remote backside of Fieberbrunn.



This week at Saalbach is probably the ideal scenario for the average Euro tourist. The weather is nice, the sun is too weak to mess up the pistes, and they are all well covered thanks to both snowmaking and the two January storms. Off piste is no good unless skier packed and north facing. With not much of that I’m on piste 90+% of the time. The corollary of being confined to pistes is a lot of vertical. Tuesday at Westendorf/SkiWelt was 32,400. Today I skied 40,500, 8th day lifetime over 40K. With two more days here I totalled a lifetime 6 day record of 184,900, breaking my prior record at Mt. Bachelor in April 2000.