After almost two weeks out in the Alps, today was the first chance that I got to go skiing. Despite last night's opening night parties, I got up at just before 9 to collect my skis and headed up the mountain for my first run of the season.

St Anton is renowned for its challenging skiing. This, combined with the fact that I had not done any skiing in just over a year, made for a fairly tentative first run, with lots of wide sweeping turns (despite the fact that I was struggling to turn left). A couple of hours into skiing and with a few different runs under my belt I was starting to feel more confident, when it started to snow heavily. This fast developed in to a full-scale whiteout with visibility becoming extremely bad and this quickly cut short my first days skiing.

Despite being upset I took this opportunity to explore town a bit more and buy an Austrian phone. Even thought there was a whiteout up at the top of the mountains it was, upsettingly, raining further down in the town.

Most of the resort is yet to open. Only 32 of the lifts in the Alberg region are open at the moment. Most of these are accessed by the Galzig bubble lift that runs right from the centre of town in St Anton, and takes you to a wide range of challenging blue, red and black runs. Although many of the runs lower down in the resort are still closed including those that give access to the notorious Krazy Kangaroos and Mooserwirt après-ski bars.

This however is all set to change soon. There is heavy snow forecast for the next couple of days and temperatures are set to plummet over the weekend, going as low as -25°C at night. A number of lifts are due to open for the first time this season on Saturday, whilst the opening of the brand new Rendl bubble lift is scheduled for the 18th of December. This will give access to a wide range of challenging runs and some notorious off piste skiing.

St Anton however is not just well known for its skiing, and the lack of open runs and lifts is not keeping everybody away from the town. In fact, Katy Perry and Russell Brand were reported visitors last week. The town is, however, still fairly empty. On Wednesday night, many of the bars in town had their opening night parties, which were packed, mainly full of seasonairres gearing up for the season before the first guests arrive in resort (for the main tour companies) at the start of next week.

Hopefully over the next few days, as more snow arrives in town and it gets colder, this will enable many of the runs at the bottom of resort to be opened and things will get into full swing both in town and on the slopes in time for their arrival.