Regarded as the cradle of modern Alpine skiing, Sankt Anton is established as one of Austria’s big-name ski resorts. And for a good reason: it combines proper skiing with a bustling apres-ski. Sitting in a narrow valley at the foot of the Arlberg pass Sankt Anton is a long, sprawling place, with some traditional character.  Bustling with activity throughout the day and late into the night. The vast Ski Arlberg ski area is serviced by several modern cable cars, all of them within walking distance. The cable cars will bring you into the heart of the vast Sankt Anton ski area.

Lot’s of variety in slopes

Sankt Anton’s slopes fall into three main sectors, two of them linked: the south facing Galzig / Valluga area pistes accessed mainly by the modern Galzig bahn, and the Kapall area accessed by the Gampen chairlift or the Nasserein bahn. Rendl is a separate mountain, reached by a gondola from the centre of town.

Sankt Anton has 2 lift linked ski sectors: St Christoph and Stuben, and the up-market skiresorts Lech – Zürs and Schrocken Warth.

Sankt Anton is especially attractive for advanced skiers, although there are very few black runs on-piste. Most of the expert terrain is off-piste. With most of the resort above the tree line, there’s a nice range of off-piste areas to be consumed by experts at Sankt Anton. The runs in the huge bowls below the Valluga are justifiably world-famous. Lower down, there are some moderate challenging runs in many directions from both Galzig and Kapall-Gampen. In general, under good snow conditions the off-piste skiing is quite good, but unfortunately due to the south-facing aspect, these quickly become sun affected. For some serious off-piste skiing and better snow quality head over to neighboring Zürs.

For intermediates there is great skiing in any conditions due to good grooming and snowmaking facilities, and there’s a huge range of runs to choose from. You could easily master them in a week. Intermediates will find plenty of friendly runs across Gampen, Rendl and Sankt Christoph. The run from Schindler Spitze to Rauz is long, varied and ideal for good intermediates. Alternatively, turn off from this part-way down and take the Steissbachtal to the lifts back to Galzig or Gampen. The Kapall-Gampen section is also interesting, with sporty bumps among trees on the lower half. Good intermediates may enjoy the men’s downhill run from the top of this sector to the town.

There are few easy cruising pistes; most blue runs here would be red in most other European skiresorts. The beginners runs are relatively challenging, and as Sankt Anton has a tendency to be crowded, these green runs can quickly become mogulled making them even more difficult. Beginners will most likely head up Galzig chairlift towards St Christoph where the gentler blue slopes are more prominent and make up roughly a quarter of all the slopes in the resort. The gentlest cruisers are the short blues on Galzig and the Steissbachtal, but they get extremely crowded. The blue from Kapall to Gampen is wide and easy to cruise. The best bet for beginners is to start at Nasserein, where the nursery slope is less steep than the one close to the main lifts. There are further slopes up at Gampen and a short, gentle blue run at Rendl, served by an easy draglift. But there are no other easy, uncrowded runs for beginners to progress to.

The Sankt Anton has one a good snow depth track record. Unfortunately, this can’t be said of the town itself; it is shielded by from most serious weather systems. If the weather is coming from the west or north-west (as it often is), the Ski Arlberg region gets a full load, and as a result the Sankt Anton ski area receives over 7m of snow – neighbouring Lech and Zürs and Schrocken Warth get even a staggering 10m! These resorts often have much better conditions than other resorts of a similar height, and we see great fresh powder here as late as mid-April. But many slopes face south or south-east, causing icy or heavy conditions at times.

Legendary après ski

The apres ski in St Anton is legendary and centres around several piste side mountain restaurants until the early evening. All the après ski takes place above the Galzig, starting with the Heustadl which you will encounter as you head down Blue 1. This bar is more family friendly and tame compared to a lot of the other bars. The Krazy Kanguruh is one of the oldest après ski bars on the mountain and used to be the wildest. However in more recent times the Mooserwirt, on the other side of the piste, has become more popular. This plays traditional German folk music mainly and is pumping by mid afternoon. Be warned it will be absolutely rammed. The ski back to town (they both close at 8pm) is a snow cannon slalom, short but often performed imperfectly.

For more information on Sankt Anton am Arlberg please visit the website of the tourist office: www.stantonamarlberg.com

Reviews Profile Snow

There’s a huge amount of first-rate ski holiday advice and information out there. If you’re planning on making the most of the snow and heading to the Alps this winter, it’s worth persuing these websites for short-term ski condition and snow forecasts.

If you ask wintersport enthusiasts what they consider to be the leading wintersport website in Europe the majority (55%) say it’s Snow-forecast.com. We at Skiweather.eu were very curious to find out if that is true. Last year we addressed a similar question regarding Dutch wintersport websites. Self-proclaimed number one wintersport website Sneeuwhoogte.nl in fact appeared to be by-passed by Milq Media’s Wintersporters.nl. We have monitored the Dutch wintersport websites for a while and noticed much dynamics in the top-league. We have predicted the trajectory of some websites which turned out to be fairly accurate.

The Dutch wintersport website scene is very crowded. Some of the Dutch websites therefore extended their business into Europe. Snowplaza by Spalder Media Group is probably the most active. Wepowder, one of the few more dedicated and focused websites, was also successful in broadening their geographical horizon.

In an effort to gain more insight into the competition within Europe and into the question whether the Dutch wintersport scene is really overcrowded we have extended our research to draw up a list of leading European wintersport websites. As in the previous research we are not interested in pure traffic rankings but in a multi-dimensional principle which includes economic impact and link authority. The objective was to find both the key players (companies) and individual key wintersport websites. In this research we have included al wintersport websites who focus on both ski resort – and ski condition information for the countries in the Alps.

We’d expected a massive amount of European wintersport websites based on our experience in Holland. In fact, the European wintersport website scene is neither as wide nor as diverse as we had expected. There are around 50 wintersport websites with substantial authority, of which several are solely focused on a specific language area or country. By and large we are speaking of 30 independent companies of which 30% is from the UK, 27% from Holland and 17% from Germany.

The leading wintersport information companies turn out to be Bergfex, followed by Snow-forecast.com and Skipass.com.

Bergfex does an excellent job in providing detailed and accurate skiresort data and channels it’s content to the most important language areas. Bergfex is listed with 4 websites (domains) in the European wintersport website top 50. The most popular being Bergfex.at and Bergfex.com.

Snow-forecast.com is in fact number two in the league, as opposed to the public view. This is used to be the standout website for up-to-date snow forecasts. Snow forecasts are still very important to wintersport enthusiasts and many have signed up to the snow alerts of Snow-forecast.com. Among the leading European wintersport websites there are several more specialised on the weather and ski conditions e.g. WeathertoSki, Alpenweerman, Skiweather, Wintersportweerman etc. Almost all of them are based in Holland

Skipass.com is in the top 3 which is fairly remarkable due to the fact that it is in french. Once you get passed this you will notice that it is a great looking and very informative website. It is very diverse.

Russia is presented by Ski.ru in fourth position. It’s position is very close to skipass.com. Ski.ru surpasses the latter in economic authority. We can not comment on the content of Ski.ru, but we have a feeling that the visuals on do not hinder the ranking in the top-league.


Reporting from Ski.ru

MountainNews Corp. -owner of SkiInfo and OnTheSnow- is fighting it’s way to the top in a similar manner as Bergfex. In Holland MountainNews Corp. was able to settle itself in the top league with SkiInfo.nl in just a short time. MountainNews Corp. is owner of 6 websites in the top 50. The french version of SkiInfo being the most popular in Europe.

Spalder Media Group is represented in the top 50 with 5 websites, of which the Snowplaza.de is -by far- the most popular.

Regarding the top 30 we would like to make some remarks. Tiscover (#7) is not a dedicated wintersport website. Moreover it applies a massive amount of 590 forward domains to push it’s ranking. In our opinion it’s presence is inflated. We think it’s natural position in the ranking should reside around position #12 or #13.

IgluSki is in fact a ski holiday agent -UK’s largest-, but does cover the requirements for this research. The same can be said of Crystalski (TUI), but this website is positioning itself as a full-blown ski holiday agent. The primary focus is well beyond that of a general wintersport website. Both in economic impact and site traffic Crystalski.co.uk outperformes IgluSki. In our opinion Crystalski belongs to position #7. That raises the question whether IgluSki is (still) the largest ski holiday agent in the UK. One thing is for sure; Inghams is Uk’s third, but it is not a dedicated -general- wintersport website like the other two.

Snowheads.com is a long-established and thriving community forum on all skiing matters, but does not have native content on ski resorts or ski condition, but the members do provide up-to-date information on both ski resorts and the ski conditions.

The Dutch websites Wintersportweerman and Alpenweerman are focused on both the weather in the Alps and in Holland. Their objective is not solely the Alps. The position of the Dutch Skiing Association (Nederlandse Ski Vereniging) is inflated by their ski insurance business.

Leading European wintersport companies (last update Mar 10nd 2017)

RankHostnameCompanynameCountry
1bergfex.atBergfexAT
2snow-forecast.comSnow-forecast.comUK
3skipass.com1997 MediaFR
4ski.ruSki.ruRU
5skiinfo / onthesnowMountainNews Corp.US
6J2skiJ2skiUK
7skiresort.infoSkiresort Service InternationalDE
8tiscover.comTiscoverAT
9igluski.comIgluUK
10wintersporters.nlMilq MediaNL
11snowheads.comSnowheadsUK
12skigebiete-test.deSkigebiete TestDE
13skiclub.co.ukSki Club Of Great BritainUK
14snowplazaSpalder Media GroupDE
15schneehoehen.deSchneemenschenDE
16skisport.dkSkisport.dkDK
17skinet.czSkinetCZ
18skieur.comNiveales MediasFR
19welove2ski.comWelove2ski.comUK
20wepowder.comWepowder B.v.NL
21sneeuwhoogte.nlSneeuwhoogte B.v.NL
22wintersportweerman.nlWintersportweerNL
23weathertoski.co.ukWeathertoskiUK
24inthesnow.comIn The SnowUK
25powderbeds.comTsb ServicesUK
26wintersport.nlNederlandse Ski VerenigingNL
27alpenweerman.nlGemi MeteoNL
28skiweather.euSkiweather.euNL
29skiinformatie.nlSkiinformatie.nlNL
30iloveski.orgIloveski.orgES

The popular snowsports news website PlanetSki.eu is not listed because it does not meet the requirements of this research. If we would list this website it would take over position 26.

please contact us if you want to obtain a detailed list of the individual leading European websites.