Schladming Review

A snowHead

Hello All,
Just back from a week in Schladming,Austria and taking the opportunity to give a short review of my trip.Skied all four "home" mountains extensively during the week and also spent a day at Falgeralm about 40mins by ski-bus along a side valley.Overall I really enjoyed the experience and would definitely go back. The positives "on slope" were the extent of skiing and the relative ease of travelling by piste and lift between the mountains-easier to travel from Reiteralm to Hauser Kaibling the the other direction, the only critisism would be the 1 hour wait at end of play between busses back to Schladming,for the amount of people on the slopes to only have 1 bus serving Line 1 is not ideal, but these busses were on time and reliable.A lot of people seemed to travel by coach and we counted 16 coaches in Hauser Kaibling car-park last Sunday.The whole area gets quite busy at weekends-Fri,Sat,Sun- and is still reasonably busy during the rest of the week to the extent that you have to watch out of the corner of your eye for high speed merchants before making a turn or stopping at the side of the piste.An attitude seems to have crept in that its ok to power through the 4foot gap between skier and side of piste- this style must be a macho thing in Schladming as it happened constantly and would put fear into most people- but as someone said to me "maybe they have p*nis issues" as it was all lads/men that were doing it,although one got a surprise when I stuck my pole behind me as he got to 2feet from me just to see how much in control he really was, and he wasn't.To see good carvers speeding through early intermediate ski-schoolers on Blue 3 on Hauser Kaibling and no piste patrol what so ever was disappointing as people who can ski to that level should do it elsewhere.To finish off the minus points piste grooming was non-existent apart from Friday and Sat nights which catered well for the weekend hordes but left everything icy,bumpy and well chopped up from Tues to Friday on all four hills.
The jewel in the crown was Falgeralm- truly deserted pistes which although limited and not very challenging were very enjoyable, a place where you could straight line down from the top or fast carve and not be a danger to others.I really enjoyed the several race courses in all 5 areas that I skied- not very busy and did lots of laps to practice technique.
Travelled with a big T/O and found them really good, rep, for once a lot more concerned with skiing and customers enjoyment of the area than with selling side-line trips- he was extremely knowledgable about the whole area and very honest with his personal reviews of the hotels his Company was offering.
All in all I really enjoyed the trip and the few moans at the start of this review only slightly took from the trip,in fact the "varying"conditions were good practice for my level,but, I would not recommend the resort to raw beginners or second weekers as unless they were exceptional there is a big jump in standard from the Rhoormoos nursery/beginner area to blue runs on any of the other 3 mountains.Also I would stay close to the village centre rather than in one of the uphill hotels just for convenience and to save time waing for busses and/or walking home.

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Schladming Review

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