The Fastest Ski Lifts in the World

The mountain ski area of Hinterglemm, Saalbach and Leogang (The Saalbach Ski Circus Austria) is one of the biggest lift linked resorts in Austria offering over 200km of linked trails. Combine this with excellent piste maintenance, conveniently placed lifts and a reliable regular bus service (only needed once as once you’re up there’s no need to catch another one!) and you get one of the best Austrian ski resorts. Appealing to beginner skiers and expert skiers alike there is something for everyone!

Renowned for its excellent range of pistes, it’s possible to travel in either direction around the ski circus, staying high or using the full pistes. Access to the pistes are dotted around each village with nursery slopes in the centre of Hinterglemm, Saalbach and Leogang. For the more adventurous skier there is a 3km black mogul decent situated on the Zwolferkogel.

All this is accessed with the Ski Circus Keycard. Automatically sensing the pass in your pocket, you walk straight through the automatic gates with no need to remove your pass like so many of those old-fasioned French/Hungarian resorts!

Winner of the ‘Best European Resort Development 2009' saalbach has continued to build and replace lifts year after year with three new lifts due for winter 2009/10. The ski circus is now proud to have a higher percentage of fast lifts than any other major resort in the world.

Man-made snow

Great snow makes the best winters and even during the worst winters, Saalbach-Hinterglemm is one of the most snow-sure non glacial resorts in the world. 90% of all runs can be snowed mechanically, that’s over 253.5 ha! All powered by 8 water reservoirs feeding 460 hungry snow making machines.
Like everywhere in Austria the snow making in Saalbach-Hinterglemm can only contain air and water, all additives are forbidden (much like the Austrian beer!)

The making of snow.

Q. How to make snow?
A. To obtain sufficiently dry and not freezing snow, production must be performed under a temperature of minus four degrees C. The man-made snow production at higher temperature is not practical and is not the practice in Saalbach Hinterglemm.

Snowboard Parks

If this wasn’t enough there is also 2 professional snow parks to choose from. The Nitro park on the Aziz in Leogang and the Hinterglemm park at Unterschwarzachlift in Hinterglemm

With Stefan Gimpl, 3 times winner of the Air&Style Contest, we have the world's best freestyler in Leogang and this park offers all snowboarders and New School skiers the ideal training ground.

The Nitro Park in Leogang is the ideal place to rock and rip again this winter. Perfectly shaped obstacles with corners, big air kickers, as well as various rails and boxes, provide super training possibilities.

The two professional shapers – Reini and Erwin from the HU Cooperation – make sure that the Nitro Park is kept in its best form the whole winter and have placed the obstacles facing south so as to catch the best light and use the best terrain.
Every weekend there is the opportunity to test new Nitro snowboards.

The professional snowpark in Hinterglemm also offers free workshops each weekend.

Funparks are shaped daily by professional snowpark shapers! Improve your park-skills! Whether new School Skier or Snowboarder, perfectly shaped Corner-Jumps, Big Airs and different rails are waiting for you at the Asitzmuldenlift in Leogang. Steep corners, ground waves and speed jumps – in the flood-lit Snowpark in Hinterglemm – as well as the Freestylers also the Boarder-Cross-Freaks will enjoy these special areas – something to suit everyone! For those Skate-boarders who want to try their skills on snow they will have the opportunity to use the small, but super, Snow-Skate park. Check it out!

Skiline

After your day on the mountain, or even after your holiday, you can use the ski circus skiline system to see your altitude diagram for the day/week/holiday. You can see all the lifts you've used as well as the vertical meters and downhill kilometers you have completed.

Just enter the number on your liftpass into the Saalbach skiline system

Why not try the  SKI UNLIMITED CHALLENGE?

Take the challenge and see if you can match the World Cup star Georg Streitberger, in this unique SKI UNLIMITED CHALLENGE. Georg Streitberger has already tried to make it last year, and even though he's a well trained professional sportsman, it made him sweat!

Facts and figures:

All in all you must use 36 of 55 Lifts at least once in one day to become a part of the "Ski Unlimited Challenge Hall of Fame".

As soon as all the necessary lifts have been used at least once in one day, they will put your data  along with a picture (which they ask you to send) into the Hall of Fame at saalbach.com. Good Luck!

Go for the hall of fame now!