Obertauern

Obertauern is a string of hotels along a mountain pass at 1,740 m, the Radstädter Tauern, and the skiing surrounds it completely: lifts go up from both sides of the road and the pistes come back down to the hotel doors. There is no old village, no church square and no pretence of one — it is a purpose-built resort in the Austrian manner, which means comfortable, unfussy and entirely organised around the mountain.

The altitude gives it one of the longest seasons in Austria without a glacier, from late November to early May, and a snow record that lower Salzburg resorts envy. Around 100 km of piste rise to about 2,300 m in a ring of peaks, and the Tauernrunde is a circuit that goes all the way round the village in either direction — a satisfying day for a decent intermediate. Most of it is open, treeless and moderately steep, with a few genuinely hard pitches on the northern side.

The village's other claim to fame is that the Beatles filmed the snow scenes of Help! here in 1965, and it has never quite got over it. Obertauern runs its own lift pass rather than joining Ski amadé, which is worth knowing if you were planning to combine it with the areas down the valley.