St Anton - Short Trip Report

Travelled out on Friday, 13th March on flight to Zurich with a couple of lads for a short break. Car hire sorted and down to resort only arriving shortly before midnight. A couple of quick pints and then bed.

Up early on Saturday morning to beautiful blue skies :). A quick trip over to Pettneu to pick up skis hired from Mietski (big saving on downtown St Anton prices make it worth the hassle if you have a car) and then back to St Anton, ski passes sorted and up the mountain.

Headed over towards Stuben area initially. Lovely runs over there and nice and quiet. Snow was hard packed but a joy to ski – great for some high speed cruising :D. The runs down the back off Albona are nice, though a little short and serviced by a slow 2-man chair. Runs back down to Stuben or Alpe Rauz are long and fast.

After a pleasant lunch in Stuben itself, we headed back into the main St Anton area and headed up the 3-man Schildlergrat lift. Red 13 off the top is a steep red – a little bit busy but well worth doing. Took a short cut at the corner along one of the routes to cut out the long schuss. Most of the route was more like a piste with only one tricky pitch of large moguls.

I had to finish early to get down to see Ireland beat Wales to keep their Grand Slam hopes alive. Unfortunately, Wales had other ideas :oops:. An extraordinary defensive display from Wales combined with too many errors from Ireland and the Grand Slam was gone. Fair play to Wales for a magnificient performance (b*****ds) :mrgreen:. Some drowning of sorrows required so quite a few weissbiers consumed over the rest of the evening :mrgreen:.

Sunday morning came around a little earlier than was welcome but this was a ski trip not a holiday so up and at 'em :wink:. Another blue sky.

We decided to drive over to Lech. Headed over to Warth pretty much straightaway and had a wonderful day on virtually deserted pistes. It's a great area and with a nice variety of slopes.

Was operating without regard to the piste map in the main but this backfired. Followed signs for a particular piste and followed it down until I reached a dead end in a small clearing with 3 or 4 houses and no sign of life and no lift out of the place – meanwhile the other lads had gone a different direction so were off somewhere else :oops:. I feared it might take me hours to get sorted but after a little more exploring I found the main road and a bus stop. Thankfully, a bus came along only a few minutes later to take me back to the main area :shock:. It turned out the piste was essentially the home run for the neighbouring village of Strocken which is not yet lift-connected :roll:.

After lunch we headed back to the main Lech area and skied a number of runs in that area. Home runs got a bit slushy in the afternoon but otherwise great conditions.

Hit a few of the après ski bars in St Anton when we got back and finished up having dinner and a few pints in the Underground on the Piste. Nice food, good music and a good evening was had 8).

Monday morning, we headed over to Zurs with the intention of doing the White Ring Circuit. However, we got our ski legs in first with several runs down pistes, 15, 16 and 17 in Zurs. These are really nice pistes, we had them to ourselves and it was possible to bomb down them. Time for some whooping of the kind only skiing can extract from middle-aged men :shock:.

We then headed over to the Madloch and took the route down to Zug. Even though it is on the piste map as a route, it had been pisted reasonably recently and was no more difficult than a hard Red. A long interesting descent. Then a chair (Zugerberg?) up to the main Leach area, some skiing around there before descending into the village, crossing the road and taking the Cablecar up the other side to follow the White Ring back to Zurs. Some nice skiing on Reds 1,2 and 3 in Zurs before finishing up :lol:.

Tuesday was our last day – a late flight out of Zurich beckoned. Normally, I would stay local in such circumstances but we had enjoyed the skiing in Zurs so much we headed back there. Light was flat in the early morning so no bombing this time :(.

It did clear up a bit later on and we pretty much completed a similar circuit to the previous day before finishing up around 3pm. A quick shower and change and off to the airport.

A fantastic trip yet again but curiously, we skied very little in St Anton itself (once we had the car to get across to Lech or Zurs so easily). With the addition of Warth, the Zurs/Lech /Warth area is now immense and provides a lovely range of piste skiing – far better than St Anton :wink:. It was also much quieter so that we often had entire slopes to ourselves.

St Anton was obviously livelier in the evenings though it was appreciably quieter on Monday evening that the previous 2 evenings:lol:.

I don't have any photos but did bring my new toy - a GoPro :shock: Once I figure out how to make a half decent video, I will upload one or two to bore you all :roll:.

Sounds like a great weekend, apart from the rugby. Mind you this weekend made up for it!

I love hearing about trips to St Anton, and seems you found out it was best to do what we did and spend more time over at Zurs and Lech. If only St Anton wasn't quite so busy all the time.......
Stuben I loved, gorgeous little village there as well. Blankets on the old 2 man chair to go up with, didn't bother first time and then got half way up and realised why over that cold breezy valley!
Would go back there any time. Glad you enjoyed it.