Kitzbuhel-trip report

A snowHead

Hi

I was in kitzbuhel from the 9th til the 16th of Feb and so thought I'd do a quick report.

We had two beginners (never skied on snow before), one intermediate (skis parallel but struggles on anything steep/bumpy/icey) and two advanced skiers (enjoy steeps and bumps, starting some off piste skiing)

The weather was blue skies, sunny with afternoon temps of around 5'C apart from on Friday, when cloud settled in valley in the morning and by afternoon had risen so had trouble seeing more than about 5-10m.

The snow on piste was great when we arrived, off piste was already pretty tracked. The red runs down into town were icey by the end of the day and towards the end of the week there was more ice in general on the pistes.

For Beginners I wouldn't recommend Kitzbuhel, over on the Kitzbuheler Horn there were some good beginners areas to get started on but the step up to the blue runs was much bigger than in some other resorts. A lot of the blues seemed quite steep at parts, so you really needed a better skier to go check out which ones were a bit gentler before sending a beginner down them. Also from the Hahnenkamm Gondola, there is only one blue run which is a trail with steep drops at the side, which is quite scary for someone who is still concentrating to control their skis. We also had a bad experience with the ski school, which I've explained in another post. There is enough for beginners, but other resorts are better.

For intermediates or Advanced skiers Kitzbuhel was amazing! For intermediates there are plenty of blues and reds, which are challenging and also some gentler bumps to learn on. For advanced skiers there are some great blacks over on the Steinbergkogel and the ski safari over to Pass Thurn/ Hollersbach is a great day of skiing. There were also some great bumps on the runs from the Pengelstein and Zweitausender. For a challenge there is also the Hahnenkamm race run, which had blue ice on large parts of it!!! and plenty of bumps! I was soooo impressed with myself when I made it down, even if it was with considerably less style and speed than the racers on the TV!!!

The lift system was a bit old in places, but there were also some new lifts and I think they are continuing to improve. Even despite the older lifts, queues went down pretty quickly in most places.

We stayed in self-catering accommodation "Apartment Kitz Zentral" which was arranged through the company "apartment managers" who I would definately recommend. The apartment was right in the centre of town and only a 5-10 minute walk (with skis) from the Hahnenkamm Gondola. Although Kitzbuhel has a reputation of being very expensive, we found a couple of italian restaurants and an Austrian one in the centre of town, which were reasonalbly priced for good food.

So all in all a great Holiday and for intermediate or advanced skiers I'd give Kitzbuhel 9/10!

Help!!

Kitzbuhel-trip report

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