Bad Hofgastein 6 Day Snow Forecast

G. Gibson from United Kingdom writes:

Great weeks skiing in the Gastein Valley. Stayed at the Palace Hotel in Bad Hofgastein; highly recommended. Unlimited free drinks with dinner (has a small bar area where you serve yourself with beer, wine, soft drinks or just plain old water). The breakfast and dinner are buffet style every day. You can help yourself to as much as you like with a selection of dishes available (no more sitting in the restaurant waiting for your 7 courses of nouvelle cuisine for 3 hours and still feeling hungry at the end).
The ski bus stops directly outside the hotel, and drops you in the centre where the schlossalmbahn is situated. Here you can either change buses for Dorfgastein, Bad Gastein or Sport Gastein or stay on board to go too the skizentrum at Angertal.
Not much in the way of beginners pistes, more geared to intermediates, with apparently the longest run in the Eastern Alps: red 1 from Hohe Scharte all the way back down to the bus station at Schlossalm.
Dorf Gastein has the best selection of runs, however, on occasions the grooming of the pistes was below par, especially after a moderate snowfall on Wednesday. The pistes, the following day, resembled mogul fields, I know it's difficult in this situation, but not one machine was spotted around the Angertal/Bad Hofgastein area, unlike the Stubai valley where, in similar circumstances, the piste machines were out 5 abreast attempting at least to make a difference.
There seems to be some confusion between the blues and reds; some of the reds are easily blues, where as some of the blues, although not too steep, were barely 8ft wide in places, not much confidence if you are a beginner.
All in, a great area which, if you have transport, is part of the vast ski amade lift pass area.
Go on give it a go, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

2009-01-18