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Fab skiing in two small resorts

1st March 2011, by Chris Gill

Lovely day in Kühtai [(c) W King]

Two resorts, both quite different from one another but providing a day and a half of excellent skiing this week. I arrived in Austria on Monday, heading first for Innsbruck and the Otztal Valley.

The best laid plans don’t always work that well, so Monday afternoon found me unexpectedly in Igls instead of heading for Kühtai. Taking advantage of the clearing cloud and fresh weekend snow to village level (it has been very mild and sunny here recently) I joined friends for a few hours exploring the former Winter Olympic resort – which is actually now gearing up for the Youth Olympics in 2012.

The Patscherkofel mountain is a good one to warm up on: gentle, wide runs. It’s tall too, so you spend more time on the snow than on the lifts. And mostly wooded, the slopes were ideal for a changeable afternoon of light snow showers and sunny spells. We started at the upper lift station, the best place to hire skis and purchase an afternoon ticket. The snow was in surprisingly fab condition, soft and grippy mostly. Cover was not deep, but the runs were all open and very well prepared. We cruised the wide, treelined slopes – mainly variants of the Olympic red run and long blue that weave around a half a dozen lifts. Apart from a couple of steeper pitches on the red, it’s generally all easy stuff.

Taking the ancient single-seat chair to the summit, we followed ski-route 1 back to the Panorama restaurant – more a rough road run than a ski-route, but a very pretty one. And the views across to Innsbruck and its other nearby mountains were superb. Once the sun appeared it was extremely mild, and by the end of the day we were in typical spring snow conditions. There was time for a drink before heading to Otztal. And what a delight: cokes and beers at half the price of France (small ones of these at 2.50 euro each!).

From my base in Oetz, the first main village on the way to Sölden, it takes 20 minutes to Kühtai. So, I spent Tuesday there. The resort is atop a high and exposed pass at 2000m; it reminds me of a smaller version of Obertauern, with its slopes on both sides of the road and collection of coloured buildings. Few trees and exposed to the wind, but absolutely stunning in the wall-to-wall sunshine of today. The snow was in super condition too at this altitude, fresh and grippy on a firm base. Only the uppermost runs were a little wind-blown in places.

The small ski area (40km) is very firmly intermediate: nearly all genuine red runs, a few blacks and only a couple of short nursery slopes. We spent the day doing a circuit to cover both sides of the valley and using mainly chairlifts (the few T-bars can generally be avoided), with a hearty Tirolean lunch at one of the few huts on the mountain. There are also good opportunities for off-piste here too, with lots of tracked and untracked powder.

It wasn’t too busy either. Kühtai did perk up with visitors during the afternoon, but was generally uncrowded. First thing, we enjoyed perfectly groomed and virtually empty slopes.

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