World’s Third Biggest Ski Area To Debut This Winter
Monday, September 15th, 2008
The ski lift connection of Westendorf to the rest of the Skiwelt, Austria’s biggest ski area, is due to be completed by the start of this winter, ending decades when the last section of “Austria’s largest lift-linked ski area” involved a bus ride.
This season a combination of magic carpet conveyor lifts, long pistes, gondolas, funicular and even a bridge over a valley road makes the connection instead. What’s perhaps more significant for statisticians than most skiers and boarders,is that it also opens the gateway to another 168km (105 miles) of piste around Kitzbuhel, thanks to the Ki-West gondola completed a few years ago linking Westendorf to Kirchberg, itself lift-linked to Kitzbuhel on the other side of the mountain.
The final link is being completed thanks to the construction of a new eight passenger gondola, the “SkiWelt - Kitzbühel Alps” on the Westendorf Choralpe. A new four-and-a-half kilometre (three mile) ski run descending 1,020m is a pleasant by-product of the connection.
Altogether this means about a dozen ski villages will be connected although you still need a shuttle bus to provide the direct connection from the Ki-West gondola valley station between Aschau und Kirchberg and the Kirchberg Pengelstein station over to Kitzbuhel). There will be some 420km (263 miles) of ski runs in total. These are served by nearly 150 lifts, together capable of uplifting nearly a quarter of a million skiers an hour.
To ski it all on one ticket you need to purchase the Kitzbüheler Alpen pass which is priced at 204 Euros for a six day adult pass this winter. It actually covers an additional few hundred kilometers of piste (705km/445 miles in total) at still more neighbouring ski areas above Fieberbrunn, Waidring, St. Johann in Tyrol and Kirchdorf. But you still need a bus to reach them.
The merged ski areas, which are yet to decide upon a new official joint title, will be one of the largest in the world. The area believes it is third on size, but it seems more likely to be around joint fourth with Paradiski (425km), the Milky Way (440km including Pragelato) on the French - Italian border and most tenuously Evasion Mont Blanc (claims 445km but not yet fully lift-linked) in France behind The 3 Valleys, the lift-linked part of the Portes du Soleil and the Sella Ronda in Italy.
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