St Anton as a Ski Holiday Destination

St Anton is in the big league of ski resorts. For competent skiers, skiing in St Anton is a great resort and the closest you can get in Austria to the French-style expert skiers resort and it boasts with an Apres Ski scene to match the best.

St Anton, together with the areas of nearby Lech and Zurs, has a varied and expansive ski area, together with a very good snow record boosted with snow making facilities. The nature of the terrain is well suited to experts and bold intermediates.

Snow Reliability

St Anton is situated in the Arlberg Mountains and has over the years had a very good snow record. The village is at an altitude of 1305m and the top of the ski areas rise to 2660m on the Vallug and 2 335m on Kapall.

Extent of the Ski Area

Altogether 276 km of pistes

• 38% Blue
• 51% Red
• 11% Black

A look at the piste map shows that the ski areas fall into 3 sectors.

• Leading out of the village itself is the Valuga sector from which the slopes of St Christoph and Rauz and Stuben can be reached as can the Kapall sector.
• Leaving form the centre of the village is the lift to the Gampen and then the Kapall from where runs lead back down to the village and nearby Nasserein to the East
• On the other side of the village is the Rendl sector.

Suitability for different Skiing Abilities

For experts St Anton is one of the worlds great skiing fields and is a genuine Austrian alternative to the great French resorts like Tignes for off piste skiing opportunities which, however, should not be attempted without a guide.

Opportunitites to go off piste in deep snow exist in all four of the skiing sectors. For those who prefer the pistes every sector has its most difficult run graded "black" although not every one deserves its grading and at least one of these was previously a "red" run.

For bold, advanced intermediates there are lots of testing pistes and off piste terrain to try especially the Mattun ski route. For timid intermediates there are few easy cruising runs though many of the blues get bumpy (especially after a snowfall) and some get horribly crowded.

St Anton is not the most ideal resort for beginners. The nursery slope close to the main lifts is a little steep for an first time learner and the nursery slope in Nasserein is better (not that convenient though) and a few short blues to progress to but there are not really any easy uncrowded blues for a timid learner to progress to. To our mind St Anton does not serve a party of skiers of mixed abilities as well as, say, Ischgl does.

Queues

Although there have been significant upgrades to the lift system there are still places where queues develop (ask for our last newsletter of 2009 to see the horrendous queue for the Zammermoos chair lift) and we have heard of hour long queues for the cable car from Galzig.

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