Schladming

Schladming is a small, old market town in the Enns valley in Styria, and its ski area is the 4-Berge-Skischaukel: four mountains — Hauser Kaibling, Planai, Hochwurzen and Reiteralm — linked by lifts and pistes across the valleys between them into around 120 km of piste between 745 and just over 2,000 m. The Planai, directly above the town, is the famous one: it hosted the World Championships in 2013, and every January its floodlit slope stages the Night Race, a World Cup slalom in front of a crowd that can reach 50,000.

The terrain is wooded, moderately steep and consistently well groomed, with long tree-lined reds that hold up in bad visibility and a valley-run home from each mountain. The links between the four are real but involve some traversing and a couple of bus connections at the ends, and the resort is part of Ski amadé, which puts the rest of the Salzburg areas on the same pass.

What sets Schladming apart is what is around it. Across the valley, Ramsau am Dachstein is a high plateau that is one of the best cross-country skiing centres in the Alps, host of the 1999 Nordic World Championships, and above it the Dachstein glacier offers a small high-altitude ski area, cross-country trails at 2,700 m and a walk-out viewing platform.