Austria 

Spotlight On Obergurgl-Hochgurgl

(Originally written for OnTheSnow.com)
by Ted Heck

Obergurgl may sound like an ad for Listerine, but this little village in Austria’s Tyrol is refreshing in other ways. The snow is sure, lift lines are short, and nights are quiet.

Four hundred twenty people live year round in Obergurgl, but 4,000 skiers can descend on a weekend. Nearly 70 percent of them drive down from Germany and most of them are repeaters. What better endorsement can a resort have?

Obergurgl-Hochgurgl (there is a smaller, higher village of Hochgurgl that is jointly promoted with Obergurgl) guarantee snow, because the two areas are so high.

There are really two ski areas, separated by two massive canyons. They are connected by a gondola that doesn’t move up and down but sideways across the canyons. Obergurl has steeper slopes that can be in the shadows in the morning. The gondola whisks skiers over to sunny snowfields above HochG to connect with a high-speed quad at mid-mountain. After cavorting there on groomed slopes and having lunch in a mountain restaurant, skiers can follow the sun back to OberG. In the course of the day they can have vertical drops of 4,200 feet and three-mile runs. Nearly 70 miles of prepared runs are served by 24 lifts. Cross country fans have 5.5 miles of tracks.

“Because we have all those open spaces on the mountain and only 5,000 beds,” says Koler Hubert, office manager of the information office, “we have no waiting in lift lines. And that is the way it is, from November through the end of April.”

The skiers are a far cry from speedsters seen at the larger resort of Sölden in the same valley. Gurgl skiers constitute an older crowd, more interested in rounded turns than straight-line schusses.

The “older” appellation is even more evident in the après ski scene. People come here to relax at a gentler pace and in more luxurious surroundings. Large hotels, such as Edelweiss and Hochfirst, can command $150 a day and up per person for half-board. Celebrities from the sports and entertainment worlds come here to hide. Paparazzi have to shoot snow scenes instead.

Nevertheless, a budget-minded skier can stay in a comfortable bed-and-breakfast establishment such as Pension Alpenbllick for under $60.

Some hard core skiers may say there is not enough at Obergurgl-Hochgurgl to keep them amused. They can drive 20 minutes back up the Ötz Valley to Sölden for wider possibilities, including two skiable glaciers. Before they return they should kibitz the younger and much livelier après ski scene. (See our spotlight on Sölden.)

From one vantage point above Solden you can look toward the area where the Ice Man of Similaun was found in 1991. The discovery of the 5,000-year-old body fascinated archeologists around the world and ignited a jurisdictional dispute between Austria and Italy about which country he died in. The Italians won, because the Ice Man is now in their country, the main attraction of the museum in Bolzano.

The Ötz valley is an hour and a half from Innsbruck, state capital city of Tyrol. The state has 119 ski resorts. It may take a lifetime to get to them all, but Obergurgl-Hochgurgl should be high on the list of baby boomers and older skiers.