Ski Lifts in Saalbach
Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn has modern, fast, high-capacity lifts which keep queuing to a minimum. The standard ALPIN CARD lift pass covers not only all the Skicircus but also Zell am See and Kaprun. You can also buy the Superski pass which covers all the nearby ski areas in Salzburgerland and Tirol.
Saalbach Ski Lifts
The Skicircus has modern fast, high-capacity lifts: most are gondolas or high speed detachable chair-lifts. Drag lifts, T-bars and old-fashioned slow chair lifts are very rare.
Lift queues are also rare but they do exist – usually on sunny weekends or peak season holidays when day-trippers from Austria and Southern Germany flood into the resort. At other times, the combination of having a big ski area which naturally disperses skiers in all directions, and an efficient lift system, keeps queuing to a minimum.
Saalbach Ski Lift Passes
Ski ALPIN CARD
The standard Saalbach liftpass, the Ski ALPIN CARD, covers not only all of the Skicircus (Saalbach, Hinterglemm, Leogang and Fieberbrunn) but also Zell am See-Kaprun’s Schmittenhohe and Kitzsteinhorn ski areas. The Skicircus just by itself is a large ski area with 270km of piste and 70 lifts; adding Zell am See and Kaprun to it makes it enormous, with over 400km of piste and 120 lifts.
Zell am See’s Schmittenhohe area is accessed via the ZellamseeXpress lift at Viehhofen, which can be reached on skis from Saalbach, or by ski bus. The return journey from Zell am See requires you either to ski an ungroomed ski route to Viehhofen, or to come down in the gondola, then take the bus back to Saalbach. There are also buses between Saalbach and Zell am See, and onward buses from Zell am See to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier and Maiskogel ski area above Kaprun.
More details at: https://www.saalbach.com/en/winter/skitickets/ski-alpin-card/
Super Ski Card
Super Ski Card
The Ski Alpin card might cover an enormous area, but the Superski card covers a mind-bogglingly gigantic one – about 2,800km of piste and 900 lifts. Almost every resort near the Skicircus in Tyrol and Salzburgerland is covered, including Kitzbuhel, Soll and Alpbach.
For most skiers staying in Saalbach for a week, who already have access to all the slopes covered by the Ski Alpin card, the Super Ski pass is not worth the extra cost, unless there is a specific resort they want to visit.
More details at: https://www.superskicard.com/en/
Beginners Ski Passes
Beginners in Saalbach should not buy a lift pass until they’ve graduated from the nursery slopes. All the nursery slopes in all the Skicircus villages operate on a block-ticket basis: you buy a block of tickets which entitles you to use the lift for a set number of times.
Snow conditions in Saalbach
Saalbach and the other Skicircus ski resorts are increasingly dependent on artificial snow-making, and this in turn is dependent on temperatures dropping to below freezing at night. From late December to March this is rarely a problem although if there is a warm start to the season, some of the runs might not be open by Christmas, and whilst the upper slopes are frequently refreshed by snowstorms, the precipitation can fall as rain at resort level. As winter turns into Spring and temperatures rise, the ski area visibly changes: some pistes close and others resemble narrow white stripes on an otherwise green and brown mountainside.
Artificial-snowmaking in Saalbach
The Skicircus has one of the most efficient, extensive and effective artificial-snowmaking operations in the world, aided by piste-bashing machines that don’t just groom the slopes, but also measure the snow depth, so snow can be moved to where it’s needed.
The artificial-snow making uses no harmful chemicals. The Skicircus slopes in summer are used for grazing by cattle and the area is popular with hikers and mountain bikers. Although a lot of water is needed for artificial-snowmaking, it’s ‘borrowed’ rather than ‘used’ as it melts in the Spring and is returned to the local rivers. Over the 90% of the energy used also in artificial snowmaking in Saalbach comes from renewable energy.