 Poster: A snowHead
|
Ski Amade, Radstadt, 2nd-6th Jan 2009
Resort: Radstadt/Altenmarkt/Flachau/Alpendorf/Zauchensee
Country: Austria
Domain: Ski Amade
Author: aj
Date: 2nd-6th Jan 09
The group: 12 totally mixed. 2 non-skiers, 3 boarders, 7 skiers from 24 to 60!
Overview: Highly recommended fast cruising, empty slopes, fabulous queue free lifts, and a short transfer but watch the bus timetables and be careful with your nervous novices.
Accomodation: Gasthof Torwirt in radstadt ( www.torwirtradstadt.at ). Fabulous location in town, right by the post office where all the buses stop. Spar right outside. Friendly staff, good email communication, huge rooms, cheap single supplement. Food ok-good certainly no complaints. Would recommend without hesitation to anyone wanting to stay in Radstadt.
Services: The ski hire place is close enough you can get to it in socks! and is super cheap 29E for 4 days, effcient, great condition equipment and when we brough back one ski broken in half - merely inquired if my friend was ok  Klieber Sport (looks like a shoe shop, the boots/skis are downstairs) on hoheneggstrasse.
Buses: Fine when they arrive, not horrendously crowded and decent condition but the timetables for the inter-resort ones are infrequent
and a bit odd. For instance to flachau 8:45 or 10:45 out, only viable return was 16:40. Taxis are about 25E back to radstadt from most
places though so not terminal if you get it wrong!
Travel: Flew ryanair to salzburg, fab as usual, transfer with http://www.ski-transfer-salzburg.at/ who were faultless, with great english and the correct child seats for the 18month and 7 year old. 110E for up to 8.
The slopes:
Radstadt/Altenmarkt:
The local hill, fairly limited. The radstadt blue was steep enough in pitches to daunt our novice 7yr old - but the rest of us found the whole hill to be fairly standard for the area, quiet and worthwhile although not enough to keep you busy more than a day.
Zauchensee:
Pretty, but don't go up the chair over the black (left as you come out of the base restuarant bit), there is only the black back down, or a blue to a drag. Great base which worked well for the parents of the toddler, they could take it in turns to board and easily keep in touch. Nice gentle blue from the top of the gondola (turn left, 9 i think). Was babysitting the 7yr old at the time so didn't notice much else!
Flachau:
Busier (with ski schools for a start) but definately the place to go with anyone nervous, depite the prevalence of reds on the map it was the easiest of the hills in this side of the area by some margin and very open and friendly to ski. Very spread out with many lifts from valley - all a walk from the inter-region bus route - a 5 min walk or switch to the shuttle! We used the 8-jet and then the star jets but all seemed pretty good. Pick your accomodation carefully if staying here!
Wagrain - Alpendorf:
Only dropped over here for an afternoon but was impressed - easy shuttle from one side of wagrain to the other and good skiing. Empty, higher slopes, great cruising - we easily made it to alpendorf and back in an afternoon. Run to lift 60 (gipfelbahn) particularly recommended for a blast on the return journey.
Schaldming
You can get the bus from radstadt to this set of linked hills, starting with -->
Reiteralm/Pichl
Lovely at the tops but take the reds on Reiteralm lower down seriously. The bottom of 2 in particular is not kidding about its rating. I'd avoid with anyone nervous. Despite my warnings the top lured everyone into thinking they'd be fine, and the it took well over an hour to coax our novice down the mountain, most spent on the last few pitches which really are steep. In the condition they were in several of us were having issues stopping TO help others while of course keeping up a nice calming mantra about how it wasn't steep and icy really and they just needed to make one more turn....once you suceed you can hop up to-->
Hochwurzen: Lovely gentler hill, especially low down, blighted by a wierd and irritating fixed grip standing gondola as the main lift on one side. I know it has a groundbreaking thing where the base station moves to absorb the lift movement. I don't care, why is it so SLOOOOWWWW. If you can stand/avoid that, highly recommended. The run to the new lift was particularly good. Especially recommend Rohrmoos for beginners/low inters and the run back to Gleiming (31 and 40?) which are a fab red blast and much, much less challenging that the runs down from reiteralm. Going the other way through rohrmoos brings you to the shiny new, underused and fabulous golden jet to -->
Planai: Fast crusing and fun - the timed speed strecke and slalom (1e) well worth a go! Steepish at the bottom, fine above the mid station, especially if you stick to the blues. I love run 6 back to the goldenjet - big swooping red, with steep pitches, especially the last bit to the lift. And for someone who likes to cruise/just moving up to red - 12 is also lovely. Run 1 back to base is fine, but icy at the bottom and gets rather busy at times.
From Planai you can get to haus which I didn't manage this trip but have before imo again it's an easier mountain with nice blues and cruisey reds
Overall as long as you have an organised person to keep an eye on the bus timetables, you can easily spend a week exploring. We are real mile eaters and after 4 days I could easily have used another 4 to return to favourite runs plus it was possible to get to gastein too which we never even tried.
No mention of food/restaurants as everywhere we went was fine, although busy! Most places do roasted chcken which is lovely especially if you just can't face another wurst or schnitzel. Skiwasser is cheap, available everywhere, it's just mixed fruit cordial.
Roll on 31st Jan and my next trip.....
aj xx
|
|
|
|
|
|
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
|
a.j., Very helpful and inspiring  Presume you didn't use the ski school at Flachau? If you did comments would be very helpful.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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?
|
|
Sorry, no ski school this time - too short a trip and we never skied the same place twice. I did spend some time chatting to the flachau kids school and one thing I can say is their english skills were good. aj xx
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FAQ