We were all very thankful that the drive to Ellmau was short, only about 2 hours with a little bit of traffic. As we left Salzburg the girls were a little worried that a) It wasn’t snowing and b) that there was no snow on the sides of the road. But has soon as we got closer to our destination there was more and more snow to be seen. It didn’t snow along the way but by the time we got to our apartment there was plenty. Our accomodation in Ellmau was a beautifully crafted 2 bedroom apartment that looked out over a ski run at the bottom of the Skiwelt. The Skiwelt is one of Austria’s largest inter-connected ski area’s with 85 lifts and 250km of ski runs.

We settled in and then went down to the ski rental shop to get our gear sorted out for the week. The girls and Amy grabbed ski’s and I got a snowboard. However the selection of snowboards was very limited, all they had were beginner boards and didn’t have anything more advanced which was a little disappointing. This would turn out to be a recurring theme whilst skiing in Austria, there are very few snowboarders and most of the facilities and even the attitude of the locals was heavily biased towards skiers.

On the first morning we headed out to the practice slope