Unmapped Gems
TownBest November – April

Sölden

Two glaciers, the highest lift-served terrain in Austria, and the most reliable snow in this list.

Sölden's argument over every other resort here is altitude. It has two glaciers, lifts running above 3,000 metres, and a season that opens in autumn and holds late — in a bad snow year across the Alps, this is the one that still works.

The village itself is functional rather than pretty: a long strip up the Ötztal, heavy on bars and hotels, with none of the medieval-core charm of Kitzbühel or Alpbach. What it has instead is 140-odd kilometres of high, wide, well-maintained piste, and the ice Q restaurant above Gaislachkogl that appeared in Spectre, with a Bond exhibition built into the mountain next to it.

Come for the snow and the size of the mountain. The village is somewhere to sleep.

Sölden