You may have heard of Saalbach’s reputation as an après-ski “Animal House,” but nothing can prepare you for the reality:

You have stopped to enter the dark, woodsy Hinterhagalm tea bar on the last run down, having worked up a thirst on the nearly two-mile Asterabfahrt trail into Saalbach. By the time the first beer arrives, the waitress has to swing her tray to ad-just to the unspoken rhythm of the overflow crowd and the clumping of ski boots keeping time to the beat of traditional Austrian folksongs from the live band. Even before the T-bar outside the door closes for the day, the entire chalet is transformed into a dance floor. Legs dangling over the upstairs balcony jig to the two-step. By the time you’re ready to locate your skis for the final 300-yard glide into the village, the way out is blocked by a swaying mass of bodies. You have to literally get down on your hands and knees and make a crawl for it. No one seems to notice. Then, just before you make it between the last set of legs separating you from the door outside, you hit your head on something. Looking up, you see you’ve bumped heads with someone crawling in.

Here are the Saalbach village map and the Hinterglemm village map in pdf format.

Saalbach forms the epicenter of the activity. Squeezed in the narrow throat of the valley, with mountains crowding in as a backdrop for the chalet-style hotels and their carved wood balconies, the village is as quaint as any you could picture in the Alps. The custard-yellow steeple of an old church dominates the packed rooftops, and a mountain stream rushes soothingly through the town.

The valley floor broadens considerably just a mile up the road at Hinterglemm. Here hotels are larger and the village fans out over a wider area. Because it is as central to the main ski crossroads of the valley as Saalbach and has more mid- to upper-level hotels with full amenities, Hinterglemm loses some of the coziness that you find in Saal-bach. While Hinterglemm has the look and feel of a resort, everything about Saalbach says that it was an Alpine vil-lage in its own right before the ski rush began.

Informations center Saalbach-Hinterglemm, A-5753 Saalbach, Austria
Country code: 0043
Telephone prefix: 06541
Telephone: 680068
Fax: 680069
Email: contact@saalbach.com
Internet: www.saalbach.com

Note: All prices are in Euros unless otherwise noted.

For more information on skiing and staying in the country of Austria, click the map.