Ischgl Ski Report

Just got back from a great trip to Ischgl over the St Patricks Day weekend. We managed to get 5 days skiing in from Friday to Tuesday before a late flight home on Tuesday evening.

We travelled out on Thursday evening getting to the resort very late. Friday morning was bright and sunny and after a slow start, sorting out ski hire, lift passes and hitting a little bit of a queue for the gondola, we headed off. First impressions were not great :evil:. We headed down Red 12 in the main central area. It was not very nice – pretty icy with lots of those icy marbles about. It had also been poorly pisted overnight with partial moguls left over from the previous day. I was thinking "please do not let this be the standard for the trip" :x :x :x.

Thankfully, my wishes were granted :wink:. Later on in the morning, we headed over towards the Swiss side, including Red 80 – labelled as a "duty-free Run" on the Piste Map. I gather it is sometimes also known as the "smugglers" run. A very nice long run but with a very long slow run-off down in the valley to get back to cablecar back up.

After some very pleasant skiing during the day, we headed up to the top of Palinkopf at 2864m with the intention of skiing to the valley down Blue 22/23, etc. Unfortunately, we seem to have made a wrong turn somewhere and found ourselves on Red 40 down to Gampenalp :oops:. This presented a problem as a lift was needed to get out of there and we were not sure of the time of the last lift but we definitely knew time was not on our side - so, after a long day, we had to bomb down the 900m of vertical to the lift in question :shock:. My thighs have never burnt so much :cry:. Thankfully we did make the lift on time – we arrived at about 4.03, dreading a possible 4.00 finish only to find that it went on until 4.15 :P. After that we only had to face the long flat poling section (or flat draglift along Red 3) and the home run Red 1.

The home runs in Ischgl are legendary for being difficult, overcrowded and often full of drunks. Our experience was that they were reasonably difficult and would arguably be Blacks if elsewhere on the mountain. They were not too crowded when we did them – either late after last lift up or early on our last day, nor did we get any impression of drunks on them. In fact, considering the difficulty, we saw few people truly struggling. However, as our trip went on, the size of the slushy moguls towards the bottom did seem to increase and it was often hard work :roll:.

After the 1st day, we realised that we should start on the South-facing Swiss side where the overnight freeze started to thaw out earlier giving lovely conditions. This involved heading over to the Alp Trida area and skiing off the Visnitskopf and Alp Bella mountains. Several really nice Reds in this area – 65 ,66, 67, 68, 76 :D. Great for some high speed cruising. We then made a bit of a mistake and took the Red 60 down to the valley. Rather stupidly, we had read the green line in the valley as a pathway to the Cablecar. However, when we got down, we found out it was a skibus up to the cablecar :oops:. Between the bus and the cablecar, we probably lost close to an hour's skiing.

After lunch the weather began to close in and we sought out lower runs, back on our own side. There were signs up on the lifts warning people from the Swiss side to get back there because of a building storm and most of the top lifts began to close. Despite this we still managed a full afternoon of decent skiing. The storm dropped about 5cm of snow on Saturday afternoon/night – not much but enough to freshen the slopes :D.

We established a bit of a pattern for the remaining few days of our trip, which were beautiful bright sunny days. Start in the Alp Trida area on the Swiss side in the morning and then get back to our own side in the afternoon when the sun would have softened the slopes just enough to make them near perfect :mrgreen:. On day 3, we did a tour of the Blacks including 14A. This one has a seriously steep initial pitch – 70O and does not let up much for its entire length :!:. A proper test for any skier. The 1st 50 metres or so were horrible – pure sheet ice that you could really only slide and hope that nobody else took you out :x. After that it was still challenging but fine. Overall, I would say the Blacks deserved their ratings.

On day 4, we did most of these again but this time 14a was in far better condition at the top. However, the sun had got at the bottom pitch and we had to contend with some pretty big slushy moguls.

According to Ski Tracks, we covered about 240kms over 5 days of skiing. I clocked 85kph on a speed trap schuss alongside the piste in the main bowl.

Overall, a fantastic ski area that was in great condition despite little or no snow for a couple of weeks. There seems to be good opportunities for off-piste from the lifts but this had all been completely tracked out when we were there.

The lift system was very modern and very efficient, though sometimes confusing with chairs going in all directions. Queues, apart from first gondola up in the morning were virtually non-existent. Even the morning gondola was not a big deal – maybe 10/15 minutes if you timed it wrong. It seemed to be busy from about 9.15 - 9.45. Outside of this
time, a couple of minutes at most.

Prices are expensive for Austria (though very similar to St Anton) but cheap compared to France. Large beers €4 - €5, coffees €2.50, lunches from around €10 for pasta.

The après ski scene was huge. Very large crowds gather in a number of bars on the mountain from about 3pm onwards – some of these bars seemed to have DJs beating out the music. There were huge crowds in several bars at the base as well (or maybe just the crowd from the mountain relocated). Immediately, beside the home run 1A, the bar in the 5* Elisabeth Hotel was heaving. Bizarrely for an upmarket establishment, it employed young women in skimpy outfits to dance on the counter :shock:. We tended to ignore this spot and instead "après-skied" in the Kitzlock, a smaller establishment just over the bridge. This place had much more traditional après-ski with lots of Tyrollian drinking songs, typical après-ski anthems like Cotton Eyed Joe, etc, and was great fun :mrgreen:. It was hopping from around 5pm until just after 7pm when it stopped dead, lights on and everybody out!

I was very surprised at how few Brits or Irish were in the resort – it mainly seems to attract lots of Scandanavians and Dutch (as well as the Austrians and Germans). Not quite sure why that should be the case.

I was looking a Ischgl as a option for next year
Did you have trouble finding Accommodation Thursay-tuesday ???
As we went to Solden early Feb but looked at many other Austrian resorts and couldnt find anywhere that would take us Thursay-tuesday so had to go Sunday-friday even then the majority would only take bookings Sat-Sat or Sun-Sun.

Interesting write-up, thank you! Friends were there over New Year and the home runs were "carnage" at times... but that's the same in plenty of places.

Wasley - a lot of places "hold onto the weeks" for February but are usually much more flexible either side (January and March). Smaller hotels and pensions usually moreso.

Thanks Wanderer :)
It was most interesting. You skied about twice as far each day as I did in Folgarida. And it's nice to know I'm not the only person who takes a wrong turn sometimes ...

great report Wanderer!

just printed it out and going to use it as our guide when over there!

Good work Wanderer, nice to hear about somewhere more unusual.

Thanks for comments guys.

Wasley: accommodation is difficult to get in most resorts for "split" weeks. They will definitely hold out for Saturday to Saturday if they can. The bigger and more popular the resort, the more difficult it is. We were not able to find accommodation in the village itself and had to stay in a hotel about 3 miles down the valley. As we had hired a car, this was not that big a deal. There was also a decent skibus service, though that finished before the après-ski did :oops:. Lots of searching, a fair degree of flexibility on what you will take and,sometimes, if you are brave enough to leave it late, they will "free" up previously unavailable rooms.

Ally: We did ski pretty hard all day but conditions lent themselves to high mileage - hard packed slopes perfect for fast skiing :lol:

Papa: Hope my "guide" works out for you. Feel free to pm me if you want anything more specific.

Admin: No real carnage on the home run that I saw. The home runs are difficult and were particularly slushy when we were going down but nearly everybody seemed to be able to manage with varying degrees of grace (or lack thereof) :wink:. The resort seems to attract fairly competent skiers and most people seemed able to cope with whatever they took on. Perhaps this is a feature of resorts dominated by guests from mainland Europe where they learn to ski young :roll:

Wanderer wrote:Thanks for comments guys.

Wasley: accommodation is difficult to get in most resorts for "split" weeks. They will definitely hold out for Saturday to Saturday if they can. The bigger and more popular the resort, the more difficult it is. We were not able to find accommodation in the village itself and had to stay in a hotel about 3 miles down the valley. As we had hired a car, this was not that big a deal. There was also a decent skibus service, though that finished before the après-ski did :oops:. Lots of searching, a fair degree of flexibility on what you will take and,sometimes, if you are brave enough to leave it late, they will "free" up previously unavailable rooms.

You are correct about leaving it late .The near to our departure date the more accommodation came available ,mainly private Apartments or hotels further out.But as there were 8 of us we may of had to split up into different hotels.

Good trip report and somewhere to consider for next year