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Spent the last week as a tourist in the Austrian alps together with some friends and new friends. From Saturday 09.02 to Saturday 16.02 we enjoyed fantastic weather and great skiing options in this area of Austria.

The small towns who has joined in on creating 1 huge ski resort are Brixen im Thale, Ellmau, Going, Hopfgarten, Itter, Kelchsau, Scheffau, Søll and Westendorf.
Together this is 90 cable cars and lifts, 250 km of slopes and 70 places to eat and drink. So we should have enough places to go and see for 1 week. To complete all rides and slopes more than 16 whould have to be visited each day. A busy schedule for sure, but great fun too.

We went from Oslo to Salzburgh with Sterling and from there by train.

For the town we stayed in, I can say it's not much of a party place, but since we spent most of day in the slopes (from 9:00 to 16:30) we where not up for the task of getting drunk every evening either. Perhaps I'm getting old?

Just some great Austrian beers for lunch and dinner + some healing Jegermeister was all. Only places to go out where 2 bars and 2 afterski places or Apres Ski as it's called.

The week can be summarized by this:

Saturday:
Arriving and getting the apartment in the house we stayed. A bit small, but just enough size to fit 4 with little luggage. Nice with a drying room for clothes and a place to park the skiis in the basement during nights. Even had a sauna, but we did not try that one.

Sunday:
Took the free skibus from the nearby camping place and to the base of Brixen ski resort. A gondola lift brings you up to the mountain where there are more lifts and places to go. Only 1 slope to get you down all the way to town if you do not want to take the gondola ride. We bought ski-passes valid for 6 days and for the entire area for 175 €. Quite cheap compared to Norwegian prices. Daniel needed some ski gear so he spent the day hunting for equipment and other things. Me, Pavel and Oleg spent the day in the slopes closest to the Brixen gondola to get a little familiar with the place. We got ourselfes up to the highest top close by ( Hohe Salve- 1829) and got to ride the 1 seat old lift up to this place. An "airy" experience with only 1 chair to sit in and quite old equipment, but fun too.
In the afternoon me and Oleg where able to loose Pavel. We planned to go to a lift, and on the way we had to cross a big main point with a lot of people, and suddenly Pavel got away. So early in the week he had not speeded himself up to match me and Oleg down the slopes

Monday:
We went with the Gondola in Brixen up to the connecting slopes and we headed for Hopfgarden in our mission to visit all towns during our week. We planned to eat breakfast/brunch there, but could only find a small grill with some fries and sausages as only option. The sausages where quite thin, but tasted best of the few types of sausages I tried during the trip.

After Going from Hopfgarten at 620 metres we took the gondola and 3 seater chair lift up to 1500 metres and tried to take the correct slope down to Itter. We took a wrong turn and ended up in Søll instead. Here we got the biggest height difference from one gondola ride. From Søll, you can take the 8 seater gondola ride from 703 and up to Hohe Salve at 1823. So you can say it goes up and down in the skiing world We enjoyed a beer in Søll after the long trip down and quite nice to pay 3 euro's for the refreshing brown stuff. And even get it served in nice glases. Not like the way you get it here in Norway.
The slope down to Søll is quite narrow and mostly in shadow during the day so it was a bit icy and steep for my not so sharp steel edges of my skiis. I was more standing sideways than turning town there. But quite a bit of action and fun slope.

With all this up and down, we had to go home for the day to not be locked of by the closing time.

Daniel spent his day in the practise slopes after been given basic instructions and start help by the masters Pavel and Oleg.

I was quite happy finding out that I was one of the very few riding Telemark. ( could only see 4 others during our stay there).

*continue this post later*