Site of the famous annual Koasalauf Run and located an hour southwest of Salzburg in the state of Tyrol, St Johann ski resort lies embedded in a broad valley between Kitzbüheler Horn and Wilder Kaiser mountains. The slopes are appealing to both beginners and experts, and the certain and heavy snowfall from Christmas to March makes St Johann all the more popular.
St Johann is one of those rare ski resorts in which the number of residents (8,000) exceeds the number of guest beds (4,500), indicating that it is a fully-fledged town with all the amenities you could want. St Johann blends a variety of winter sports with commerce and culture and is a shopping center for the region.
The typical Tyrolean hotels here are large and have a deserved reputation for hospitality sometimes missing in bigger, better known resorts. St Johann is not a party town, but it does have regular folklore evenings and a scattering of pubs, bars and discos. Runs drop right into the town, which makes starting après-ski very convenient. A ski school kindergarten is also available in St Johann ski resort.
Beginners and intermediate skiers have the majority of the mountain, but there are also some excellent expert pistes. There are 60kms of pisted runs, the longest of which is nine kilometres. Seventeen lifts, including three funiculars, four chairlifts (two double, one triple, and one quad) and 10 surface lifts, have a capacity to lift 20,400 skiers per hour.
If it's more skiing you're after, Kitzbühel is only a 10-minute ride away and there are many other ski areas conveniently near - 119 in Tyrol alone. Kitzbühel town itself is beautiful to look at, with one Tyrolean house after another presenting traditional Austrian scenes and motifs painted on the exterior walls. The Kaisergebirge, also near St Johann, is a mountaineer's paradise.
The ski season runs from mid-December to the beginning of April, with the best deals in January and March. The most convenient way to get here is to fly to Munich or Salzburg airports, and transfer by train (2 hours, 30 minutes); Salzburg requires a shuttle or bus transfer to the train station.
