Obertauern, Austria

masa from SLOVENIA writes:

Obertauern doesn’t seem to boast great ski runs if you happen to drive through in the summer but the number of hotels and apartments gives you an idea it’s a very busy town in winter. And it is for a reason – skiing is good. It is our favorite destination for a day’s trip. If you stay for a week you might run out of pistes but you can also check some of the other resorts in the Lungau valley. There are also a lot of concerts and other happenings in the town to keep people active.
Obetauern normally has good snow conditions from early December until April. In fact, often there is too much snow and the pistes get bad in the afternoon with heaps of snow shoved aside by skiers. The specialty of Obertaern skiing is Tauern runde. Meaning you can circle around the resort clockwise (follow the pink signs) or CCW (turquoise signs). Zehnekar-bahn is used by both ways and this used to be annoying bottleneck. With new cable cars there are no queues anymore.
The most frequently used photograph for advertisement of resort uses the Gamsleitenspitz. This run should be avoided by inexperienced skiers since it’s not prepared and is steep and bumpy. But chair lift Gamsleitenbahn 2 quite often doesn’t run anyhow.
There are also extensive cross country tracks around the resort. The nicest scenery is probably from the pass to the Kringsalm. Unfortunately this depression has to be crossed on the Tauernrunde as well and it is annoying to push your way along, I hope they will install some better connections here someday. Going CCW we actually rather ski down to Zentralbahn and ski some more on the Sonnenlifts and eat at Sonnhof – this is truly the sunny part of the resort and lying a bit lower than the upper runs also more sheltered in windy weather.

2005-12-09