St Anton is considered by many to be one of the top ten ski resorts in the world, with a vast ski area and a range of different après options. As the end of the season fast approaches, I feel that I have spent enough time in St Anton to give a decent appraisal of whether it fully deserves this reputation, and to compare it with some of the other resorts that I have visited. This comparison is best split into two distinct parts; a comparison of the ski area in and around St Anton, and an overview of the town itself and the different things to do in the area.

The Arlberg ski area (the area around St Anton), is the biggest in Austria with approximately 280 km of pisted runs and 180km of unpisted deep snow runs. Whilst for the experienced skier this might represent a dream come true, for beginners there is not much easy skiing to get quickly stuck into. St Anton is not known for easy wide open slopes and gentle cruising runs. Having said this, for first timers, especially for children learning to ski there is a very good beginners’ (‘kinder’) area with several magic carpets, and two button lifts situated at the bottom of the main Nasserein lifts. Adults, however, are likely to suffer from the lack of beginner facilities. Very noticeably St Anton does not have any green runs, which are more popular in France, and the distinction between blue, red and black is often fairly blurred. When I first arrived on the back of just two weeks of skiing in France, I found even the easier blue runs to be a significant challenge. Given this, although in the long run this challenging skiing may make you a better skier, for those learning to ski on a week of holiday, St Anton may not be the place to go.

For people with a few weeks of skiing under their belt, St Anton is perhaps the perfect place to visit. It provides a wide range of different challenges on piste, which it is tough to get bored of in a season, let alone one week’s holiday. St Anton is something of a mecca for the more experienced skier. As well as numerous challenging black runs, there is a huge range of both marked and unmarked off piste in all directions. Perhaps the most notorious area for off piste skiing is off the two tallest peaks in St Anton, at the top of the Valluga and Schindlergratbahn lifts.

It is also worth mentioning the way in which the Austrians seem to care for their pistes, which differs significantly to other Alpine resorts. They tend to favour a more ‘natural’ approach, and although the pistes are groomed daily this tends to be in a very different way than in other ski resorts, as many of the bumps and icy patches are kept largely intact to preserve the challenging skiing in the resort.

One issue, which I feel slightly less qualified to give an opinion on is St Anton as an area for snowboarders (although I have been boarding three times). However, the upgrading of most of the lift system in recent years, replacing many t-bars (particularly tricky on a board) with chairlifts, has made the resort more boarder friendly.