Austria & Germany: Skiing

We fell in love with skiing when we learned in January and March 2018 and had been looking forward to getting back on the mountain for winter 2018/19. Having only spent 4 total days on the slopes last winter, we were able to dedicate 9 total days to skiing across two trips: one to Mittenwald, Germany during Christmas (3 days of skiing out of a 5-day trip) and another back to Alpbach, Austria in January (6 days of skiing out of an 8-day trip).

We had hope to go back to Alpbach for Christmas, but our favorite hotel the Boglerhof was fully booked by the time we started planning in June (lesson learned!). We really enjoyed our time in Mittenwald in summer 2016, so we figured it was a good alternative. Hotel Garni Franziska hosted us for our stay and we had planned to ski all 3 days at Mittenwald’s local ski area; but when we arrived we learned that a lack of snow had closed it down.

Fortunately, as informed by the ski rental shop Max Rieger Sportalm, the ski area in Seefeld just 20 minutes over the border in Austria was fully open, so we adjusted our plans and skied there for our first 2 days, both times at Gschwandtkopf. It took us a little time to find our footing on the starter slope, but eventually we got more comfortable and tackled some of the longer and steeper runs.

Mittenwald’s lifts reopened on our third day of skiing (Christmas Day) and we were excited for the opportunity to stay local and challenge ourselves with a new ski area. The Kranzberg ski area is much quieter and more tucked into nature than Seefeld which was a nice change (though the views down to the town of Seefeld from the slopes was beautiful as well). We were quickly able to progress from the smaller slopes to the longer ones, eventually finding a nice run connecting a few of the trials, including a brief stretch on a red run (our first!).

We had some time to kill before our flight our of Munich, so we stopped for a walk around Eibsee, a picturesque lake in the shadow of Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain.

It was hard to say goodbye to the beautiful snow covered Alps but we knew we would be back very soon for a longer ski vacation in late January!