Schladming
Above the medieval town of Schladming is the 4 Mountain ski complex covering Planai, Hochwurzen, Hauser Kaibling, and Reiteralm. But this is just one part of the Schladming-Dachstein ski area which stretches across 9 mountains in total including the Dachstein glacier. And if anyone wants more than this, they can buy a Ski amade pass that covers 25 resorts.
The extensive Schladming-Dachstein ski area is scattered along a picturesque valley where mountain after mountain rears up. There are nine different ski mountains in total – each criss-crossed with pistes.
The main lift linked area is on the North-facing side of the valley. It consists of Planai (1894m), the mountain directly above Schladming, which is linked with Hauser Kaibling (2015m) on one side, and Hochwurzen (1850m) and Reiteralm (1860m) on the other, forming the central 4 Mountain complex. It’s a reasonable sized lift-linked ski area just by itself with 44 lifts and 124km of piste including a 4.6km FIS Alpine Ski World Championship course.
But you don’t have to stop there. At one end of the 4 mountain complex, and just a short bus ride beyond Reiteralm,is Fageralm (1885m), and on the other end, just one mountain beyond Hauser Kaibling is Galsterberg (1986m). And on the other side of the valley is both the small separate local area of Stoderzinken and two more lift linked areas – Ramsau-am-Dachstein and the mighty 2700m Dachstein Gletscher, the high point of the area.
That completes the Schladming-Dachstein ski region but it does not have to be the limit of your skiing. Schladming-Dachstein is part of the Ski Amadé, Austria’s biggest alliance of ski areas, which incorporates 25 resorts in five different ski regions, the hub of which is Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace (the vast ski region takes its Amadé branding from Mozart’s middle name, Amadeus).