Driving to Austria - Resort Advice

A snowHead

Hi,

For the last three years we have driven to France for a ski holiday and stayed in apartments in the three valleys, but now the children (two teenagers) want to go somewhere else. I fancy driving to Austria (from Rotterdam or Zeebrugge), but I am not sure which resorts would be best for distance and snow sure. We are all intermediate or advanced skiers and do like to cover a good distance.

I have been to St Anton, but now read a lot of reports that it is crowded and the base lift structure is a bun fight. As for other resorts, I don't know how good they are for snow.

Any advice would be helpful. 10 hours of so travel should be fine.

A snowHead

Ischgl and the Oetzal valley are both good destinations. Oetzal has both Solden, very busy with lots of bars for Apres ski. Obergurgl at the head of the valley quieter.
Ischgl is good skiing and very much a party town apres ski. Sure you will get many more options

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

St.Anton is about 9-10 hours from Rotterdam.
You'll have to stay in West-Austria (Vorarlberg/West-Tirol) to drive around max. 10 hours
Ischgl and Sölden are indeed other big names
Lech & Warth would be good as well.
Silvretta-Montafon might fit the bill as well

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What time of year are you thinking of going? I have driven to SkiWelt from Amsterdam easily enough. Plenty of skiing distance available. Not the highest resort (although I think that as you get further East, the lower resorts do keep the snow longer). Mainly, but not exclusively, a lot of intermediate skiing. Also linked in to Kitzbuhel
Lots of accessible resorts including Mayrhofen

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Sorry, will be going week beginning 18th February.

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We did Nauders this year drive wasn't too bad apart from a few sections of road works in Germany, Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis may be worth a look about 10 hours from Rotterdam.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Hi @pandas,

We live in Austria and Ive done that exact drive in about 9 hours - on a summer bank holiday admittedly, even so its very doable in a day. Ski Amade is our stomping ground, it is a huge ski network, take your pick for a town to base yourselves, then go somewhere different each day. Ive never experienced a queue at the lift, yes February is busier than January on the slopes but there is no bum fight on the mountains I ski.

And snow - its tip top! Mountain food is good value too.
hope that helps

Ange Smile

After all it is free

@pandas, you're going the busiest week of the season, the roads through Holland and Germany will be very busy. We drive to Arlberg 3-4 times a season via Rotterdam but never that week, we avoid it for that very reason. We go the 2 weeks following and the crowded roads going north look horrendous.

Go to Lech.

Far better than downmarket St Anton.

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@Markymark29, it does not necessarily mean lots of traffic jams if you plan your journey carefully and have more than one driver. The Dutch and the Germany stick to the usual motorways in the forlorn belief they can speed through. There are plenty of alternatives meaning you can still average 80 to 100km/h. Getting out of the Netherlands in one piece is the biggest challenge. Best to travel mid week if you can

@pandas, ignore everything@Whitegold says, it's a troll, just like stanton

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

@Samerberg Sue, It gets massively busy further down around Heilbronn, Stuttgart and Wurzburg, my point was merely to highlight that its probably the busiest day of the year as half term starts all over northern Europe and the roads are very congested. If you travel through the night OK but during the day would be very congested in my experience. I agree there's plenty of alternatives but by choice with a 1400km journey I'm not looking for A roads!

I'm pretty sure the pistes and lifts will be super-busy that week too, I suppose its unavoidable though if school holidays are the constraint.

snow reports

@Markymark29, then avoid any routes that bring people from the north of Germany to the South East. The A7 is a nightmare always any time of the year or day, only 2-lanes most of the way - looks easy on the map but with the road-widening going on it is one long traffic jam at any time. Look outside the box and there are easier roads to use. The roadworks around Würzburg are blocked every day not just peak periods, trucks getting stuck or drivers shunting each other in their haste to arrive a couple of seconds earlier than the car in front.

Many still believe that German autobahns are fast because there are no speed limits, well those days are well behind us, but foreign drivers still try to see how fast they can drive and end up in the ditches and cause the rest of us problems with the hold ups they cause. The A7 is typical as it goes from Hamburg to the Austrian border so it is a major truck route for the Transalpine freight. There are faster routes now since the A5 has been widened to 3 and 4-lanes, then using the A6 to link with the A9 or the A93. Best sometimes to take the road less travelled. Quite a few of the Dutch and Danish clients I welcomed to Flachau this past season were avoiding the A5 A7, A3 and A9 because of the problems they have had in the past and they mainly travel at night to avoid as many of the bottlenecks as possible

@Samerberg Sue, Yep agreed, need to look closer at it before next trip....

You know it makes sense.

@Samerberg Sue, you seem to have woken up with all your faculties as sharp as ever. wink

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Re. Lech. If you do decide on it. DON'T follow sat nav instructions as they will send you through the Bregenzerwald/Warth. Fine in summer, but usually the road from Warth to Lech is closed from November to May.

A snowHead

@pam w, the tumours have not yet taken over, nor will they while I can still breathe.

A snowHead

@Samerberg Sue,

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I live in the Netherlands and mostly the really bad driving is around the major cities. The smaller towns/villages are a little better but boy do these Dutch drivers cut corners, literally. I don't think I've ever seen one drive to the apex of a junction before turning.

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Thanks for all of the advice on this. It has been a while, but I need to pull my finger out and do some booking. So, we are restricted by School holidays, but this year ours are a different week to most of the UK, so Ferries are cheap (silver lining), but Europe roads sound busy. I may ask a question later about that.

I need to get a focus on a resort/area. From the discussions here I am thinking about SkiWelt, but I am not sure which resort(s) to look at. We are a family of four, all very good skiers, I don't expect that we will be partying to the late hours, so apres ski won't be an issue. Does anyone have a recommendation?

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@pandas, I know you've just said you're looking at the Ski-Welt but if I was driving to Austria I'd go to the Zillertal. One pass covers the whole area and with a car you could easily ski a different area every day. Mayrhofen is the obvious place for accommodation as it's a good size town and all the UK TOs go there. I prefer the skiing at Zell Am Ziller and Kaltenbach but all areas are worth exploring.

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One pass next season now covers about 3,000km on the new Salzburger/Kitz Alpine combined pass. Stay the Brixen/Kirchberg side of the valley and you have quick access to either side being the Ski Welte to the north and Kitzbuhel to the south west

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

@pandas, Westendorf is by far my favourite part of the SkiWelt with by far the best skiing IMO.

After all it is free

Thanks for more advice.

You can probably tell that I have limited experience skiing in Austria (Zell am See and St Anton), most of the time we have been to France, but as it is getting so expensive, we thought that it was time for a change.

So, I have Valkyrie throwing in the option of Zillertal, which I had not considered, but it looks like it is in the magical 10 hours from Rotterdam. I have had a scan at this and I can't see Mayrohofen on the map (does this mean that it is a trek to get there). If I went for Zillertal, where would you recommend staying. We will have a car, but I don't really want to drive everywhere.

Any other views on Ski Welt Vs Zillertal?

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Mayrhofen is the biggest resort up the valley and is easy to get to, have another look at the map. I would also recommend staying there, you can have day trips out to some of the the other areas once acclimatised.

Now, Ski Welt Vs Zillertal, well I've been to the Ski Welt ~ 10 days and the Zillertal ~ 50 days, so it wins out for me but I am heading back to Kitz next Jan.

I think the reality is they are both great areas, just make sure you stay somewhere with good easy access to the slopes, eg not Soll.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

How about Warth? Have not been but skied the Arlberg region 10 times or so. Linked up with the Arlberg now, is the snowiest resort in the Alps and looks like a decent drive too.
I've driven from Scotland to Austria twice in the summer. We tend to allow 12 hours from Calais taking out time and allowing for jams etc.

snow reports

@pandas, +1 for Westendorf, it has the best skiing, particularly for better skiers, in Skiwelt (red 11 is 1000m vert of pure fun) and it is linked to Kitzbuhel on skis and by free skibus. The skiing is also within walking distance of the village unlike most of the N side of Skiwelt (Soll, Sheffau)

Your spot on the Brixental road is also good for access to both sides of ski welt and to Kitzbuhel (over westendorf or by bus) but Brixen is more of a strip of buildings either side of a main road than a village, it has restaurants and bars etc, but not especially pretty and the road is quite busy . If pretty village doesn't matter then it would be a good location.

@Pandas, last year we - wife and 2 teenagers - decided to look for new horizons after skiing in France for a number of years. After consulting Snowheads we selected Kirchberg and had a great week at Feb 1/2 term.

Kirchberg allowed good access to Kitz area, plus Ski Welt. Buses are frequent and its easy to go via Ki West gondola to cross to Ski Welt. Most of the time we spent around Kitz - boys wanted to do Hahnekamm daily it seemed, but loads of good skiing for what you say your level is. Lift system is good and there were very few queues during the week.

We drove from Calais on a Friday and took the route through Belgium, Luxemburg into Germany, stayed in Leiphiem and then onto Kirchberg. Returned via Reims, where we overnighted. Traffic around Munich was very heavy and my plan of leaving around 8 to get lunch and some skiing in on the Saturday afternoon was scuppered as we didn't get to Kirchberg until about 2pm, and all were grumpy having sat in traffic for 4 hours Sad

This year we're going to Serfaus and going to do this in one hit each way. We're lucky that we are in Kent so not much of a journey this side and can get to the tunnel at sparrows fart and are usually back home within an hour of the train leaving when coming back.

You know it makes sense.

@pandas, If you're interested in the Zillertal I posted a fair bit of information about the area, especially Kaltenbach/Hochfugen, in this thread: http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?p=2742972&highlight=kaltenbach#2742972

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@pandas, I think it's a good location as long as you are happy to do a 10 minute walk to the lift.

My view on skiwelt:
Westendorf - you have to go up to go down to get across to the main skiwelt area. Not actually a big deal and nice skiing but can cut into your time to explore new areas at the beginning and end of the day.
Brixen - nice compromise if you really want to explore skiwelt and Kitz although if you haven't been to Skiwelt before you probably won't manage to get around everything in a week. Southern facing slopes can get quite soft / lumpy depending on conditions.
Scheffau - need a car as it's about a mile from the bottom of the gondola, very quiet village but nice home runs at the end of the day
Soll - liveliest village, busy runs at the end of the day

I've not actually stayed in the other villages but would happily stay in all of them. Soll is my least favourite as it tends to get bottle necked in certain places when accessing the rest of the area - not badly but just that other places work better.

I've stayed near Kirchberg and skied the Kitz area and came back to SkiWelt for a day but I've never felt like leaving SkiWelt to go to Kitz. The area to the left of the 3S lift in Kitz is great but I found the rest to be weather affected and a bit of circular procession to end up doing the same stuff over and over.

A snowHead

Just FYI and you may already be aware: you need winter tyres in Austria. And, I believe, snow chains as well. Apart from needing them anyway, you don't want to give your insurance company an excuse to reject any accident claim on the ground of not conforming to local laws.

A snowHead

@LaForet, You need winter tyres and option for chains in any winter sports area, irrespective of whether its law or not I suggest - cant believe that the French allow summer slicks up the hill (or maybe I should!), even worse that drivers go up into the Alps on them in France.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Markymark29 I'm with you on this. I'd agree that anyone who goes to the Alps in winter should use this as the final reason to get themselves winter tyres, which they'll find useful even in a non-snowy British winter. It would make life a lot easier if the French did as you suggest, given how often they get hit by snow on school holiday change-over Weekends. Snowchains aren't very practical in mixed tarmac/snow/slush - you can't keep taking your chains off/on every few hundred metres. By far the worst drive in recent years was 'round Lake Geneva on the autoroute in the Rush Hour with piles of slush in-between the lanes and everyone driving at their usual speed. I had winters on an AWD and it was frightening enough - summers would have been deadly.

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@LaForet, Always used to make me laugh (not really because I was generally stuck behind them), on a snowy change over weekend, stuck on the elevated section of the Tarentaise/ Moutiers motorway as everyone without winter tyres bambied around and held up the traffic for 10's of miles behind. Then as you climbed up to resort the police pulled everyone over not using chains into the Aire de Chainage......I often through why don't they just insist everyone has winter tyres on, and check at the Lyon toll booths?

In Germany/ Austria anyone doesn't have them on gets tutted at initially and laughed at by the locals when you end up in a ditch, why wouldn't you etc? wink

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Proper winter tyres and an all wheel drive Subaru have done the trick for many a year for me in Austria. I've made it up mountains when the ski buses had chains on with no problems. I don't believe that chains are legislated for but if you cause an accident by not having suitable equipment for the conditions then the insurance will undoubtedly go against you.

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Went to Hinterglemm via the tunnel, A26/A4 stayed overnight in Strasbourg and next day via the autobahn 8 to Hinterglemm. Was a very easy drive with hardly any traffic....I did it in one go on the way back which was good too. Roadworks are still ongoing on the Autobahn 8. Great ski area, best lift system in the world by far and low prices!! Not busy at all.....

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free · Last edited by After all it is free on Fri 9-09-16 17:14; edited 1 time in total

OP: If you need an intro to winter tyre, wheel and chain selection, there's a good overview at

http://www.babybmw.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=90035

it also has a link to a video graphically illustrating the advantages of winters, using a Ford Kuga at the Tamworth Snowdome and various combinations of winter, summer and AWD. The article is specifically for BMW 2 Series but most of the points are generic. Whether to get winters or not is a bit of a 50:50 question for UK-only drivers but if you are going to the Alps, then to my mind, it swings the whole argument strongly in favour of getting them, with their being useful in UK winters as icing on the case, so to speak.(xDrive is the BMW version of AWD/4x4).

Thanks for all of the advice.

I am trying to narrow down the choice of resort. We will rent an apartment/chalet and on the basis of the advice here, it looks like Zillertal Vs SkiWelt, but I have to say that Warth looks very interesting. Chasing a village in Zillertal with the best connections and ease of immediate access to pistes is also a challenge as I have not been to this region.

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@pandas, Warth is more than interesting, its awesome. Not a car journey for the feint-hearted though, the last 30-40 miles either through Bregenzerwald (if accessing from Bregenz) especially after Schroeken, or via Lechtal (via Reutte) can be very deep snow.....we drive via P&O Hull/ Rotterdam and its worth it when you get there though. It's like skiing used to be 15-20 years ago, nobody speaks English, endless untracked powder, no crowds and powder heaven. We go every year, its fantastic. Just don't tell anyone how good it is....if they ask its really poor. wink

Help!!

Driving to Austria - Resort Advice

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