Obergurgl-Hochgurgl

Q: Obergurgl or Hochgurgl — where should I stay?

Obergurgl if you want a village: shops, a few bars, a choice of restaurants and the wider ski sector. Hochgurgl if you want to step out of a hotel onto the piste and never see a road — it is a handful of hotels at 2,150 m with nothing else. The two are linked by a gondola across the valley and by ski bus, so wherever you sleep you ski both.

Ötztal, TyrolSee it on the map

Foto: RobertG · CC BY-SA 3.0

Region

Ötztal, Tyrol

Country

Austria

Local time

Europe/Vienna

Currency

EUR

Obergurgl sits at 1,930 m, the highest parish in Austria, at the very end of the Ötztal road where the valley runs out against the Italian border. Hochgurgl, a cluster of hotels at 2,150 m a few kilometres up the Timmelsjoch road, is even higher and starker. Together they form a compact area of around 110 km of piste rising to over 3,000 m, and the altitude means snow from mid-November to early May without needing a glacier.

The atmosphere is the opposite of Sölden, twenty minutes down the valley. Obergurgl is a quiet, well-mannered hotel village, mostly four-star and half board, with the same British and German families coming back year after year. There are no queues to mention, the lifts are modern, and the après-ski happens at a couple of umbrella bars rather than along a strip.

The skiing itself is gentle to moderate: wide open slopes above the tree line, mostly blue and red, with a handful of steeper pitches and good easy off-piste after a storm. Experts will run out of challenge within a few days, which is precisely why everyone else likes it.

Last reviewed 13 September 2026

Best suited to

Beginners
Families
Intermediates

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Where lessons start

Both villages have nursery slopes right beside the hotels, and the gentle, wide pistes above them make this one of the easiest places in Austria to progress from a first lesson to real runs within a week. Hochgurgl is the gentler of the two sectors overall and its slopes are higher and colder; Obergurgl has more variety and the village life. Because guests tend to be booked into hotels with meals, instructors here work to a fairly fixed daily rhythm — agree times early.

Getting there

The same route as Sölden, plus another fifteen kilometres of mountain road. Innsbruck airport is about an hour and a half, Munich over three hours, and buses run from Ötztal Bahnhof station up the whole valley in a little over an hour. The Timmelsjoch pass into Italy is closed in winter, so the road ends here — a dead end in the fullest sense, and part of the appeal.

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Qualifications required in Austria

Teaching skiing or snowboarding for payment in Austria is a regulated profession: an instructor must hold the Skilehrer qualification. Instructors listed as certified on Alpine Pal have either sent theirs to us for review or are vouched for by the ski school that invited them.

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Obergurgl-Hochgurgl: common questions

Obergurgl or Hochgurgl — where should I stay?

Obergurgl if you want a village: shops, a few bars, a choice of restaurants and the wider ski sector. Hochgurgl if you want to step out of a hotel onto the piste and never see a road — it is a handful of hotels at 2,150 m with nothing else. The two are linked by a gondola across the valley and by ski bus, so wherever you sleep you ski both.