- skiwelt season open -
With the latest dumping of snow, I was excited about getting out for a bit of skiing. Only a couple of hours as I had home duties to attend to. The ‘skiwelt’ (ski world) that we live in covers a huge area. Even in the summer there are a load of lifts open to us for our mountain biking, but it is in the winter months the hugeness of this operation is seen. To put Austria’s largest ski area into context here are a few stats.
- 91 lifts and cablecars
- 279km of pistes
- over 1000 snow machines covering 210km of piste
- 70 mountain huts, restaurants and après-ski bars
Another fun thing is the continuing development of the area. New for 2009 are a number of fun things that I want to check / try out.
- new 6 seater chairlift to speed connection to Soell.
- fun park in Hochsoell.
- fast 8 seater gondola to the top of Hohe Salve.
- 2 new connecting gondolas to the ski area of Westendorf.
- brand new red piste route.
Today I wanted to see how quickly I could make it from Scheffau over to Westendorf and back again. With the new 8 seater you can ski all the way over to Westendorf with no bus transfer. This is fantastic news as it opens up a whole new area of skiing that previously most skiers wouldn’t have bothered with.
The new red route in Westendorf was beautifully quiet, long sweeping turns with a couple of steep sections. I’m really looking forward to taking our guests over to see this part of the skiwelt. We’ve mountain biked over here many times but the convenience of skiing this area should be great for our holiday guests.
