During the past few winters I’ve been fortunate to introduce my teenage son to the joys of skiing. We’ve fallen down multiple slopes in the French- and German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and last January we decided to cross the border to Austria to find out if their pistes were more forgiving (I was also curious about why this Alpine country lures more Irish skiers than any other). Our decision to visit the home of Edelweiss and schnitzel may have been swayed by the special place Arnold Schwarzenegger occupies in our family’s heart. Twins and Terminator may have been watched more than once in our house and we all fell even further for his charm (and that of his donkey, Lulu) when Arnold, a three-part Netflix documentary, was aired in 2023.
Arnold is also a fan of a pair of ski poles and he is known to use them, perhaps a little more adeptly than us, at Kitzbühel, a top-tier Tyrolean resort in the west of the country. Arnie’s hotel of choice, the five-star Stanglwirt, is booked out when we visit, along with the whole town, due to our dates coinciding with the Hahnenkamm Races, featuring one of the world’s most difficult downhill courses (so much for thinking the Austrian slopes would be easy!).
We settle instead in nearby Söll, with its onion-domed church spire leading the eye towards the Wilder Kaiser mountains towering above the village. Söll cannot offer movie star selfies but the 275km of groomed pistes connecting the village with the SkiWelt, the second-largest ski area in Austria, is a definite silver lining.
No film crew is needed to conjure a fake snowstorm on our arrival at the valley station to pick up our skis. Instead the real thing falls around us in heavy clumps, as we wrestle our unwilling feet into unwieldy ski boots. All my anxious checking of weather apps over the preceding week has been unnecessary. As the Hexenwasser Gondola sweeps us up the 1,150m to the peak at Hochsöll, the discordant noises of the modern world recede, absorbed by the snow-covered pines. A welcome hush descends momentarily – until the spell is broken by a skier answering his phone in loud German.
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Another chairlift deposits us even farther up, to the summit of Hohe Salve, where the highest pilgrimage church in Austria awaits. Right on cue, the snow clouds part to reveal a 360-degree view of 70 mountains across Austria, Germany and Italy. We both sit there with jaws dropping at the utter majesty of being surrounded by a soaring, glacial wonderland, breathing in the scene before sore feet and aching backs kick in.
Our joy of the view is soon replaced by looming terror as we tighten our boots and ready ourselves for the 8km descent back to Söll, the longest ski run in the whole of the SkiWelt region. After a hiatus of a year, there’s always the worry that the turns won’t come and that an ambulance might cut short our time on the mountain. Mercifully, muscle memory kicks in, and with wide smiles we plummet down the relatively empty slopes, largely in control of our skis. The lights of the village finally appear before us, but buoyed by our incident-free descent we make for the gondola to return back up the mountain.
Après-Ski is already going full throttle at Stöcklalm, one of the 77 huts that dot the SkiWelt, with a party of men dancing on the tables belting out Livin’ on a Prayer across the valley. We aren’t quite brave enough to join in the singalong but beers are ordered (the drinking age is 16 in Austria) and we settle into deckchairs, engrossed by a line of snowploughs lighting up the darkening pistes.
The ploughs are readying the snow for further action, as Söll is home to Austria’s largest night-skiing area with 11km of illuminated slopes. Two beers and one fillet steak tenderloin later, we reluctantly leave the party but the thrill of skiing in the dark for the first time is too much to miss. Without the distraction of the daytime view it is easier to focus on our technique, and we both move up a gear, enveloped in the stillness of the night. The crunching sound of newly groomed snow soundtracks our descent to Söll.
The next morning the village church bell wakens us at 6.48am. Out on the balcony, a crescent moon sat in the lee of the mountains as the slopes turned slowly from blue to pink. Hotel AlpenPanorama certainly lived up to its name. Back at the valley station we meet Johanna, our guide for the day. As we return by cable car to the summit of Hohe Salve, Johanna explains that the Wilder Kaiser range (the wild emperor) is so named for the contour of a sleeping giant drawn by these peaks, with his head clearly outlined in the final summit on the skyline. Having a local lead the way, we cover far more ground than the day before and by lunchtime we have traversed the valley and made it all the way to Westerndörf.
Johanna is plied with questions relating to our favourite Austrian. She immediately has our rapt attention on revealing that she has met Arnie several times, and that he was in Kitzbühel again this year for the races. Sadly, it isn’t possible to ski all the way to Kitzbühel, but Johanna regales us with stories about our second favourite Austrian movie star, Christopher Waltz. Over a schnitzel lunch (we are playfully admonished for our order as it’s normally only eaten by locals on Sundays), Johanna shows us YouTube videos of Christopher Waltz in knitted rainbow dungarees back in his TV presenting days before Quentin Tarantino and the Oscars came knocking.
Just as we are getting on to the subject of Red Bull coming from nearby Innsbruck, I noticed some Irish jerseys at the next table. Johanna is perhaps delighted to have a break from the constant questions as I turn my attention to the group of retired schoolteachers from Cork who explained that this was their fifth visit to Söll. None of them look old enough to be accessing their pensions and I am envious of their freedom.
Johanna points out a recently opened solar-powered cable car and on our return journey we ski past frozen reservoirs filled with snowmelt that create the hydropower to fuel the rest of the area’s network of cable cars. There’s a reason why Söll has been named ecological resort of the year. Back at the valley station I meet Mario Gruber, the managing director of the company that operates these cable cars. He shows me pictures of the first lift in this valley that was repurposed from second World War wreckage. A similar level of ingenuity is on display across multiple screens in his office, where Gruber also controls the snow canons when the weather gods don’t co-operate. This practice normally comes with an enormous environmental impact but in the SkiWelt, all the water and power is local and renewable.
A different type of reservoir awaits at AlpenPanorama. The outdoor pool has partially frozen over and guests are bravely immersing themselves in the icy water between sessions in the hotel’s sauna. Within minutes we find ourselves doing the same, soon followed by a long session in the sauna with an older group. My new friends have completed the 69km SkiWelt Tour that day, a route that never repeats any lift or piste.
A slightly younger demographic queues for Guinness at Whiskey Mühle, the lone Irish pub on the main street in Söll where we recognise Sarah from the ski rental shop who has traded in Dublin for her second winter on the slopes. Exhaustion soon sets in, and at the hotel we flick through local TV stations before alighting on a news report from the races at Kitzbühel. And lo and behold, there is Arnie’s big toothy grin, clearly visible in the crowd.
No crescent moon awaits us the following morning as a blizzard obscures the sky covering the slopes with a fresh blanket of snow. We try to remember the route Johanna has shown us to access our favourite run leading down from the 1,674m peak at Zinsberg, but visibility is poor and we could do with a set of wipers for our ski masks.
An accidental turn to the right leads us off the crowded main piste, and within seconds we find ourselves back at the same location as the day before. Suddenly it feels like we have the whole valley to ourselves. The blizzard slows and, as we journey through the quiet landscape of snow-laden trees, I feel that no other ski experience can ever match this peace. A hut finally appears in the distance and we follow the throng of skiers lining up for a cast-iron skillet of Gröscht’l, a delicious dish with fried potatoes, bacon, onions and peppers topped with a fried egg.
After hot chocolate and strudel we make our way back to the Hexenwasser Mountain Station, where another queue is forming, this time for the nearly 4km-long Hexenritt Toboggan Run. We trade in our skis for two wooden toboggans and join in the hilarity of clattering somewhat uncontrollably down the narrow mountain path all the way back to Söll. Many of the people who hurtle past us looked like they might have had something stronger than hot chocolate at lunchtime and more than one has a boombox strapped to the back of their sled blasting out DJ Ötzi’s Hey Baby and other Europop bangers.
With limbs mercifully still intact after several near-misses with wayward toboggans, we make it back to the valley station, where we reward ourselves with some of the best cinnamon rolls we have ever tasted at the Der Bäck bakery, a fitting way to mark the end of our time on the slopes for another year. Florian, our Four Seasons transfer driver, waits at our hotel to deliver us back down the mountain to Munich Airport.
We haven’t come face to face with any local movie stars during our stay in beautiful Söll but every Austrian person we have met has more than made up for that with their warmth and openness. See you next winter, Söll.
Fergal was a guest of Austrian Tourism, austria.info
More eco-friendly ski resorts in Europe
Laax, Switzerland
This state-of-the-art, purpose-built resort aims to become fully energy self-sufficient by 2030. Snow-making uses recycled meltwater reservoirs, and all ski lifts run on renewable energy. Laax was the first ski resort in the world to introduce an on-demand gondola system, meaning lifts only run when needed. The area is fully digitally mapped with snow-grooming and snow-making optimised to preserve energy.
Les Arcs, France
As more and more resorts such as Les Arcs adopt 100 per cent green electricity, it’s now possible to travel to the snow in a similarly responsible manner by taking the eight-hour sail-and-rail trip to London followed by an eight-to-10-hour overnight journey on the Eurostar to Bourg-Saint-Maurice, culminating in a funicular ride up the mountain to car-free Les Arcs.
Val di Pejo, Italy
In response to research revealing microplastic pollution in the nearby ForniGlacier, this resort has banned all single-use plastics. The ski area is powered by three hydroelectric plants producing more renewable energy than it consumes. Wood-chip heating systems using residual timber from forestry work are used to heat the hotels and chalets.
