Overall

Kitzbühel is famous for the world cup downhill the Hahnenkamm which is just one of the 96 runs accessed by 58 lifts across the sprawling resort. There’s 233km of pistes, – and you can ski the Hahnenkamm Streif racecourse all the way to the bottom at the end of the day (we needed waterski’s to get through the last part at the base!)

There are three mountain peaks (Hahnenkamm – Pengelstein / Kitzbüheler Horn – Bichlalm and Jochberg – Resterhöhe) and 5 mountain villages/base areas: Kirchberg Aurach, Jochberg and Kitzbühel. Impressively they offer practice lifts free of charge at the base of all these villages so a great place for newbies to start.

All of these lifts, runs and villages unfortunately make Kitz a pretty confusing, bamboozling place to navigate, which was made even harder for us unfamiliar with the Austrian-German language (i.e. lift names – Barenbadkogel, Direttissima-Griesalm and Trattalmudde) and the three days of white-outs we had where we were literally skiing blind! You need to allow a good hour or two to ski home to Kitz as for some reason all the signs point to Kirchberg or Jochberg and we took the wrong runs every time and had to double back to get back to Kitz! Despite all this confusion we had some incredible skiing (see ski areas below) and really enjoyed Kitz.

The village is smaller than Zermatt or Chamonix and unfortunately when we were there, they were digging up the cobblestones and doing a lot of noisy repair work which took away from the charm. There’s some pretty glitzy shops and restaurants (we celebrated a birthday at restaurant Lois Stern – delicious Austrian-Asian fusion food – highly recommend) but no real après ski bar vibe (only pub was the Londoner) in town and none of the delicious cheese and wine shops of France, or bakeries of Zermatt. There are less impressive views of the mountain from the village (except from the church cemetery – beautiful at twilight) and no secret side streets or little wine bars to speak of.

Highlights: Black Run Hochsaukeser and the DB lift tucked away on its own on the Pengelstein side so lovely and steep and quiet

Tip: Huttes and many restaurants on the hill only take cash

Getting around:

It’s easy to drive into Kitz and from Visp it was a straight shot to Kitz – 5 hours down the autostrada. The weather and the roads were clear, which helped, and our (tiny) studio apartment was on the outskirts of the main village. We arrived on a Sunday, and the place was super quiet as everything was closed – even at an international ski resort!

The small village is easy to walk around – just a few cobblestoned streets and you can walk or take a bus up to the base of the main lift up the mountain which is the Hahnenkammbahn gondola.

Tip: Rent a locker at the gondola base and leave your skis and boots there overnight.

We enjoyed a nice uphill walk each morning through the legends park (which honoured all the skiers who’d won the Hahnenkamm downhill) up to the gondola.

Ski areas:

There are three mountain peaks (Hahnenkamm – Pengelstein / Kitzbüheler Horn – Bichlalm and Jochberg – Resterhöhe)

Hahnenkamm – Pengelstein is the main area that the Hahnenkammbahn gondola takes you up to from Kitz village. From here there are about another 3 lifts to get to the ski areas. It’s easy to get stuck in a loop skiing just this area which has mostly long red runs that at times get a bit narrow and very crowded. Kitzbuhel has a lot of zig-zagging along ‘roads’ to get between slopes and lifts – which get crowded with people slipping on the icy paths between the runs. We found a little corner away from the crowds “D8 lift Hochsaukesar and run 55 – which was a black only run lift area and it seems the Brits (most common skiers in Kitz) were not so keen on a black run so we had it to ourselves.

You can also ski down to explore the two other village base areas of Klausen and Kirchberg from here and get away from the crowds. It was pretty warm when we were there so these village runs were soft – or icy if early in the morning . We skied up top on hard packed icy snow, that changed to quite nice snow in the middle then into lemon gelati – slurpee slush down the bottom where it was much warmer and raining.

Thankfully the Kitz area has a numbering system with lifts numbered alphabetically then numerically i.e. A 1-5, B1-5, C1-5 as you work your way up the mountain and the runs were all written in their colour with a number i.e. red 22 blue 36 black 55 etc. This helped (somewhat) but there was a missing link which was that there was no indication of what lift to take to get further along to your destination up or down and we were either constantly lost or having to consult our map.

Most days we preferred to head over on the D9- 3S Bahn cable car to the Jochberg – Resterhöhe/ Kitzbüheler Horn – Bichlalm area.  This is an unfathomably long cable car that stretches across the valley from Kitz ski resort to the Kirchberg   ski resort  at a height of  990m above the valley floor and is “the tallest cable car not only in Tirol but in the whole of Europe.” It is 3.7km between the cable support towers and takes 10 minutes to cross.

You need to navigate up through a series of 7 F-lifts to the upper G-lifts  to get to the main ski area and restaurants. We followed our ears and discovered a mini “Folie Deux’ dance hut at the Sonnalm café which offers up standard Tyrolean dishes and some pretty serious dance music all day long. They put green ‘party people’ vests on those dancing then take everyone out skiing into the jumps park to go flying off the small jumps. We were quite alarmed to see them out on the slopes!

There’s a couple of really good long runs over here that you can have to yourselves so if you’re trying to escape the crowded Pengelstein area head over here for some gems.