BIG THINGS FOR THE SLOPES

Austria’s innovative ski chiefs went into lockdown with a dream: making the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn area Austria’s biggest lift-linked ski terrain. The lakeview resort of Zell am See was to be seamlessly connected, creating a ski paradise of 253 miles of piste.

All was underway in December 2019: the second section of the plush 10-seater ZellamseeXpress gondola, all the way to the valley floor, opened with fanfare, connecting the Skicircus to the top of Zell’s main Schmittenhöhe area. The plan was for a lift to take people back again, but works were thwarted by the financial trials of last winter.

The swish new gondola is slated for completion next season, but that doesn’t mean visitors can’t sample the full ski offering now.

It’s a fun journey with a gondola wi-fi sound system, so you can turn your cabin into a personal jukebox. Until the final lift opens, there’s a modest threemile bus hop.

This makes the region some 80 miles bigger than Austria’s biggest, St Anton’s Ski Arlberg, connecting the vast, easy-going pistes around pretty Saalbach to the ornate lakeside town of Zell, with the 10,500ft slopes of the Kitzsteinhorn glacier next door. saalbach.com