 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi all
After years of trips to Italy we've decided to give austria a try, we are group of 8 intermediate level skiers and would like a resort where we can get a self caters apartment/ chalet that isn't a bus ride for the lifts!! Which after much internet searching seems to be a bit of a problem?! When we stay in Italy we are normally either ski out or in or if we do have walk anywhere with the ski hear it's never more then 100 mts! (Lazy I know!) plus we've never stayed in an italian resort lower then 1500 mts..... So help snowheads, any ideas!? Thanks !
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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We may be able to help; we have two ski-in ski-out apartments in Saalbach. If interested send me a personal message with your contact details and I'll gladly send you a full information pack.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Samerberg Sue, Ssshhhh - we're trying to keep these for ourselves. 
For anyone like the OP who is looking for accommodation in Austria, a good starting point is the Tourist Office website for each village. For Saalbach it is www.saalbach.com . For apartments, HomeAway usually has a good selection, or just google to find the small local rental bureaus and private owners. Easyjet, Ryanair, Jet 2 and BA fly to Salzburg, Innsbruck or Munich and the airport websites have lists of transfer companies for their local resorts.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I like the recommendation of staying in Gastein on the bottom of the Saalbach column. It is at least 40min drive away from Saalbach and is on a completely different lift pass and is nothing like Saalbach Hinterglemm. Apart from that - spot on!
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Samerberg Sue, Peter Hardy's selection does seem to focus on the familiar favourites, rather than the more esoteric resorts. However, I'd need to know more about his sources of income, before attacking his integrity or commenting on whether a defence of 'justification' might succeed in any libel action he may bring!
However it doesn't seem particularly surprising or contentious that he selected Kitzbuehel over Zell am See for charm and romance (which doesn't mean that I don't find Zell charming and romantic), or that he omitted to mention Fieberbrunn and Hochfuegen (since there wasn't a freeride category in his article). It also seems unsurprising that he failed to mention resorts known only to Austrians and some of the more well-travelled  s, since presumably that would have been a different brief.
At least I can see that this thread may well turn into an interesting and lively debate about the competing merits of some of the resorts that Peter Hardy nominated or failed to mention.
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He's been trotting out the same old stuff since the 70s Tatman's Tours. Just find an old copy of "We Learned to Ski" if you don't believe me! Basically he has become a bit of a hack and fairly lazy with it. Look at the end of all his reports and you'll see who he has travelled with (they are obliged to say so).
Alpbach is a good picturesque base but apart from the very limited nursery slopes at Ausserland, the skiing is further up the valley at Innerneader and Inneralpbach. The link across to the Wildschonau is good for beginners and low intermediates and the progression there is very good. The advantage of being able to travel up and down in the gondola makes it good for getting a feel of travelling the whole mountain. Sadly, the run back from the Wildschonau side is not really suitable for beginners and still only goes down as far as the middle station where you then have to download.
The Hochkönig is a superb area with buckets of charm, especially at the Maria Alm end as well as endless intermediate cruising country and easy runs down to the valley.
The Ski amadé area is made up of many charming villages with good runs back down to the various bases - Großarl, Wagrain, Radstadt-Altenmarkt Filzmoos to name but a few. Schladming offers a huge variety of runs and accommodation to suit all pockets.
In Kärnten there are some fabulously scenic villages in the Nassfeld-Hermagor areas, as well as Bad Kleinkirchheim, Heilgenblut am Großglockner to name but a few. Ost-Tirol also has loads to offer in the Defreggental and Kals areas as well as Lienz itself. Both these areas benefited from the mega snowfalls that the Dolomites and Italian Alps received last winter.
Both Kitz and ZamS can be viewed as both charming/romantic, as well as dreary and industrialized - it all depends on which road you approach them by. Kitz unfortunately trades on its World Cup reputation and the mark up on prices reflects this. I much rather stay in St Johann in Tirol which is a really nice small town with an equally charming village heart as Kitz. Or perhaps in Kirchberg with the easy access to the whole system by the Fleckalmbahn.
Söll is for me the least desirable of the Wilderkaiser area with Scheffau and Ellmau offering more charm and convenience on the north side. Brixen and Westerndorf sides are way better but suffer with softening slopes later on in the season due to the south-facing valley runs.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Any comment Peter Hardy? 
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Samerberg Sue,
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He's been trotting out the same old stuff since the 70s Tatman's Tours. Just find an old copy of "We Learned to Ski" if you don't believe me! Basically he has become a bit of a hack and fairly lazy with it. Look at the end of all his reports and you'll see who he has travelled with (they are obliged to say so).
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I am with you completely on Peter Hardy and his somewhat predictable and not very useful recommendations however he did not as far as I am aware have anything to do with We Learned to Ski which was a pretty good book in its time.
He took over the editorship of The Good Skiing guide around '93-'94 and turned it from an interesting independent appraisal of mainly European ski resorts into a dull list of international ski resorts with little critical appraisal.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I think Samerberg Sue, may have meant We Love To Ski?
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I'm glad a couple of others have jumped in here, because I still have an old edition of the Sunday Times' "We Learned to Ski" lying about in our apartments for the edification of anyone who might find it useful, and I was beginning to wonder what it had to do with Peter Hardy and this discussion.
Are there any hardy Hardy-defenders out there? I will put my neck on the block to the extent of saying that I found most of his recommendations to be predictable and fairly uncontentious, particularly taking account of the alternative suggestions. I didn't expect to find the article to be adventurous or wide-ranging, since it seemed to be aimed at Austria-newbies, like the OP.
On the question of whether some of the other resorts mentioned by Samerberg Sue, should have been preferred to those listed by Hardy, there is bound to be a strong element of subjectivity in any selection of this kind, and, whilst the familiar, "safe" options might seem predictable and boring to the intitiated, the less ubiquitous options will often have greater appeal; for example I find it difficult to understand anyone who prefers drinking gluehwein to jagertee, or who prefers listening to Pink Floyd rather than Barclay James Harvest, even though in each case I would enthuse about both options and would respect anyone had a conflicting preference (except for BJH, which everyone should listen to .  ).
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You know it makes sense.
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pam w, Thanks for that heads-up; heaven forbid that we should go down that piste again!
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Sorry Tatman's, been away for the weekend! OK, so Hardy wasn't one of the authors of We Learned to Ski, but he is the co-owner of We Love to Ski and a hack. We love to ski for free would be a better tag, but it would give the game away and perhaps downgrade his perceived objectivity. As a supposed expert on resorts (he has been skiing for as long if not longer than me that's for sure) surely he should be educating people about the range available rather than plugging resorts because he's paid to by a TO with too many beds to shift!
That referenced article is hackneyed and lazy journalism, the same goes for the similar articles Best Places to Ski in France, The Best places to ski in Switzerland and the same title for Italy or the USA. Nothing original going back years. However it does mention Saalbach-Hinterglemm, so as your property is there it helps you broaden your market maybe? Sadly it is also one of the reasons that many excellent resorts continued to be ignored completely by the UK TOs and we have a surfeit of over-priced offers for Val d'Isère, Tignes, Söll etc. Same old, same old
I'm not a fan, I wasn't back in the 1970s and I wasn't back in 2009 pam w. My opinions don't and won't change if people keep churning out the same hackneyed pieces. 
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Poster: A snowHead
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Sadly it is also one of the reasons that many excellent resorts continued to be ignored completely by the UK TOs and we have a surfeit of over-priced offers for Val d'Isère, Tignes, Söll
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and long may that last.
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