Flachau

Flachau is part of the Salzburger sports welt, which is itself part of Austria’s largest ski area the Sports Amadé, which offers 860km of pistes. Whilst that sounds impressive, you don’t go snowboarding to spend all your time on a bus so what is important here, is that it is lift linked to Wagrain and via a ski bus to Alpendorf which provides 48 fast lifts and plenty of easy and intermediate terrain to keep most boarders happy for most of the week.

Flachau is the home resort of the Herminator, aka Ski legend Hermann Maier. It’s his name on the door of the main ski school and his brother runs Alex runs the snowboard school.

The area will appeal mainly to beginners and intermediate riders. There is very little for advanced riders on-piste, and off-piste there are some good wooded areas and a few open faces but nothing particularly steep. The terrain park (betterpark) in Alpendorf has a pretty good setup especially for more advanced freestylers, but airheads should head to 20 minutes down the road to Flachauwinkl.

Flachau isn’t the highest place in the world, the Griessenkareck peak rises to 2000m, but it does have a decent snow record with good regular dumps, and 80% of the runs do have snowmaking. Around the end of season in mid-April, the sunny days do pay their toll on the slopes and by lunchtime things do get slushy on the lower slopes.

The town is stretched along the main road, and has a work hard, play hard reputation, with plenty of après ski and live oompah bands. Getting there couldn’t be easier, it’s minutes from the A10 motorway and 60km South of Salzburg.