Arlberg, Austria - travel
My brief visit to the world famous slopes of Lech in the west of Austria in January was blessed with a day of fantastic sunshine skiing and some wonderful traditional local food and drink.
The ski area around the mountain village in the beautiful Arlberg region of the Vorarlberg state is a paradise for intermediate and expert skiers and I enjoyed a great day sampling some of the best runs that it offers – in perfect snow conditions.
We stayed at Lech’s luxurious family-run Hotel Gotthard and received great hospitality in an all too short, but very relaxed stay.
The exclusive resort, a favourite of the late Princess Diana, is a chic place to ski with people watching another ‘sport’ to indulge in as it continues to attract the rich and famous from across the continent. We were taken around the slopes by Argentian guide Julio Salgado, who was eager to show off the area he knows intimately from 30 years of skiing there.
The blue and red pistes we tackled in the morning were perfectly groomed and great for cruising, but were surprisingly quiet. There was also a notable absence of snowboarders with Lech, where skiing first started in 1901.
A cable car that only opened last year now links to St Anton from Zurs and has vastly extended the skiing area that can be enjoyed from staying in Lech and Zurs, which have 350km of downhill slopes and another 70km of cross country trails. Lech, ranked among the top winter sports destination in the Alps for more than a century, averages nine metres of snowfall each year, but is also well-equipped with snow cannons to ensure that its free-ride slopes can always be kept open through the season.
It is also home to the 22km-long White Ring circuit that takes in the neighbouring resorts of Zurs, Zug and Oberlech. Each year in January more than 1,000 skiers take part in the challenging White Ring ski race. My day on the slopes also involved a leisurely lunch at mountain restaurant Der Wolf, which only opened in 2017. The ski hut is built from local pine and enjoys fantastic panoramic views down to Lech and across to Oberlech.
The afternoon skiing involved taking the cable car to the 2,362 metes Rufikopf and trying out the runs down to Zurs before catching the regular free ski bus back to Lech.
Our equipment came from the luxurious Strolz ski shop in the village which offers some excellent shopping to enjoy and a wealth of apres ski bars through its main street and a choice of 65 restaurants.
The four-star Hotel Gotthard, which has its own family sauna, fitness room and swimming pool, aims to offer the best of the traditional food and drink that the region boasts. The charming traditional feel of the Gotthard, founded in 1931, attracts guests from all over the world and it is owned today by husband-and-wife team Clemens and Nicole Walch, the third generation of the Walch family to run it.
Nicole, originally from Australia, takes great pride in ensuring that the Gotthard maintains a traditional Alpine atmosphere at all times and offers the best in food and drink from the region.
Clemens makes his own schnapps and ‘hay’ gin, collecting mountain grasses and flowers in the summer which are then dried and used to infuse the drink which is exclusively available at the newly-refurbished Gotthard bar. He has plans to move into brewing his own beer as well.
The family also make their own traditional speck and have their own bakery which supplies the Gotthard’s tasty pastries and bread. At breakfast you have a choice of seven different freshly-baked breads in its newly-refurbished breakfast room. The rooms in the hotel are luxurious and comfortable and have a real home from home feel.
The hotel’s own restaurant and the Lecher Stube restaurant offers some wonderful Austrian favourites and I really enjoyed sampling the gulaschsuppe and wiener schnitzel and a great selection of Austrian wines.
In the summer Hotel Gotthard reopens with guests able to enjoy cycling, mountain walks, golf and gastronomic tours.
