St. Anton

The Arlberg with Barney Caddick

St. Anton

In this episode of Where to Ski, host John Morgan sits down with Barney Caddick, senior guide and owner of Ski Like a Pro in St. Anton, to unpack what makes the Arlberg so legendary.

There are ski resorts, and then there is the Arlberg. Tucked into the heart of Tyrol in western Austria, this is the place where modern skiing was born — the home of Hannes Schneider, the man credited with turning the act of sliding down a mountain into a discipline, a culture, and a way of life all over the world. More than a century later, the Arlberg remains one of the most extraordinary ski experiences on the planet, and if you haven't been, this is your sign to book.

Barney Caddick

Meet Barney Caddick

Barney has been working as a ski guide in St. Anton for the past 27 winters, is a fully certified 'Staatlich Geprüfte Skilehrer und Skiführer' - the Austrian equivalent of master and has 36 seasons teaching in 8 Ski-schools on 4 continents.

The Arlberg: A Region, Not a Resort

Calling the Arlberg a “ski resort” undersells it. This is an interconnected mountain range spanning St. Anton, St. Christoph, Lech, Zürs, Stuben, and more — all accessible on a single lift ticket. Each town has its own character and charm. With 94 lifts, vast vertical, and nearly 200 kilometers of off-piste terrain, the Arlberg is bigger and more complex than any single U.S. resort.

Unlike purpose-built ski areas designed for cruising blues, the Arlberg’s natural terrain is steeper, narrower, and more demanding. Even groomed runs often include challenging pitches. As Barney explains, this is not a place you casually “figure out.” It’s a mountain system that rewards experience — and punishes overconfidence.

Skiing with a Guide Changes Everything

One recurring theme of the conversation is the importance of using ski guides in the Arlberg. Navigating town-to-town routes, finding good snow, avoiding crowds, and staying safe in avalanche terrain all depend on timing, weather, and local knowledge.

A guide knows where the sun hits first, which aspects hold powder longest, and how to link massive day tours — from St. Anton to Zürs, Zug, Lech, or all the way toward the German border. In the Arlberg, skiing without a guide often means missing the best terrain entirely.

Off-Piste Skiing and the Legend of Valluga

The Arlberg is world-famous for its off-piste skiing, and no run carries more mystique than Valluga. The north face of Valluga is serious, exposed terrain requiring a registered, approved guide. It begins with steep, icy sections above massive cliffs — terrain where mistakes can be fatal.

Barney has guided Valluga hundreds of times, carefully matching terrain to a skier’s mental and physical readiness. Once through the initial exposure, the reward is unforgettable: a five-kilometer powder descent into Zürs through pristine alpine terrain. For those seeking a safer alternative, the Valluga west face offers spectacular skiing without the same level of risk.

Chair Two, Rendl, and Endless Sun

Not all of St. Anton’s magic lies in the extreme. Chair Two remains a local favorite, offering hike-to terrain and north-facing lines without the crowds. Rendl, a separate mountain range across the valley, delivers different snow, light, and terrain — often quieter and more forgiving allowing skiers to experience the Arlberg’s depth without venturing into its most exposed lines.

Intermediate Skiing: Its there and its Exceptional

Despite its reputation, St. Anton offers outstanding terrain for strong intermediates — especially those with several weeks of skiing under their belt. Wide alpine bowls, long groomers, and the option to download by lift at day’s end allow skiers to avoid icy valley descents while still enjoying high-alpine terrain.

Add in easy access to Lech, Oberlech, Zürs, Stuben, and St Christphe intermediates can enjoy variety, amazing skiing and sheer joy.

The White Ring: Following the Sun

One of the Arlberg’s most iconic ski tours is the White Ring, a 22km route designed to follow the sun throughout the day. Starting on east-facing slopes in Zürs, transitioning to southern exposures in Lech, and finishing on west-facing terrain back toward Zürs, it offers nearly uninterrupted sunshine and an amazing tour of the mountains — without repeating lifts. It is well marked and you can start anywhere on the loop and end wherever you like.

Avalanche Control, Storm Days, and Tree Skiing

Heavy snowfall is common in the Arlberg, and safety is taken seriously. Avalanche control cannons echo through the valleys, and upper mountain terrain may close during storms. On these days, guided tree skiing offers exceptional powder while maintaining visibility and safety — another reason guides are invaluable.

Food, Culture, and Après Ski

St. Anton also pioneered après ski culture, blending skiing with social life, food, and celebration. Apres starts on the mountain at 3 at the Mooservert and the Krazy Kangaroo and often continues well into the night.  While nightlife has evolved, the Arlberg still delivers exceptional on-mountain dining, traditional Tyrolean hospitality, and restaurants that turn afternoons into memorable experiences.

St. Anton Endures as one of the World's best

The Arlberg doesn’t cater to trends. It doesn’t flatten terrain or soften its edges. Instead, it invites skiers to rise to the mountain — to learn and enjoy from its rich skiing to its history.

As Barney puts it, in the Arlberg, the mountain teaches you how to ski.

🎧 Listen to the full St. Anton & Arlberg episode on the Where to Ski podcast at wheretoski.org

Best Hotel

Hotel Karl Schranz

Best Runs

Intermediate:The White Ring; 144 in Zurs

Expert: The Valuga; the run from Madloch to Zug through the trees (170);

Best Food

Hospiz Alm, ST Chrisophe

Best Apres

Mooserwirt

Krazy Kangraugh

Transcript

Hi, I'm John Morgan. Welcome to Where to Ski, the podcast. Today we're going to go to the Arlberg in Austria, the cradle of modern skiing, home to Hannes Schneider, considered the father of modern skiing, one of the most beautiful ski experiences I've ever encountered.

We're talking today with Barney Kadik, senior guide and owner of Ski Like a Pro in St. Anton. I found Barney online when I was looking for a guide for my family, and since then, my whole family's had some great adventures together with Barney. A little bit on Barney, and I'm sure he'll tell us more in a little while.

Barney's been working as a ski guide in Anton for 27 years. He's got some huge certifications, which in Austria is hard to do. It's like getting a master's in skiing.

And he's been teaching for 36 seasons in eight different places, schools on four continents. Barney, it's great to talk, and thanks for joining me today. Eight ski schools in 27 years, wow.

What brought you to the Arlberg region and the St. Anton? Thanks John. First of all, thank you so much for organizing this podcast, and I really appreciate talking about the Arlberg with you. I started skiing when I was very young.

We had big summer holidays in Australia when the winter was in Europe. So I used to do my university, and in the holidays, I'd be able to come over to Tirol, to Austria, and teach. So for me, it was a great escape, and the first few years, I really didn't know what I was doing.

I was just too young. And I started actually over around Kitzbühel, which is much lower altitude, and eventually I just had this list of ski schools, and I just went down the list, and I happened to call the ski school in St. Anton, and they said, yep, come right over. And before I know it, it was in St. Anton, and I was only 20, I didn't have a clue.

And I just happened to choose quite a special place, and it just stuck, just kept going. The Arlberg is a special place. You touched on it there, and it sounds like that's how you ended up there, is because it just sort of stuck to you.

It's a huge, huge region. It's got what, five towns and regions in it? It's listed as one of the world's top skiing resorts in terms of skiing and apres-ski, and in terms of skiing, at least, I totally agree with that. The official stats, it's pretty varied.

The official stats have it 43% beginner slopes, 41% intermediate, and 16% for advanced. It's got 94 lifts, and almost 200 kilometers of off-piste. It's huge, bigger than anything in the US, I think.

Those are the official stats. But tell us about the Arlberg, you know, you see it every day. And you live- I do.

The problem with these official stats is all the ski resorts around the world are trying to have 33% beginner, 33% intermediate, 33% advanced. And so to say we cater for everyone, unfortunately, the Arlberg is a whole mountain range. So if you can imagine Whistler Mountain, Blackcomb Mountain, and then you add another 20 of those mountains with that sort of vertical, and you put it all together on one lift ticket, that is the Arlberg.

So it's just this massive interconnected mountain range. Unfortunately, with these resorts, the shape of the mountains can't be changed. And the Arlberg is generally a little bit steeper and a little bit narrower in the valleys than a lot of these other resorts.

You know, you can head out to Deer Valley, and you're cruising the blues, and you're the king on earth. The Arlberg doesn't have that sort of terrain. We just have, even our easy runs have really tough bits in them.

But for the experienced skier who loves their skiing, it's a really interesting place to ski. It's a real challenge. It is.

And there are some places up toward Zuhrs and Lech where it's not quite so bad. You can go out and you can, as an intermediate, an intermediate can ski it. When you start going town to town.

When you go town to town to town, you're going to run into stuff. Absolutely. And that's why people generally get a guide.

And the guide knows where to be at what time of the day, to be in the sun, to be on the nice soft snow, to avoid the crowds. And there are ways through this, it's like being in New York, you know, and if you go down the wrong street at the wrong time, you're stuck in traffic. And, you know, so anyway, but that's why I have a job there.

That's why we're needed. Plein Air, where it's all this one big open plain, you know, you can self-navigate. You don't need it.

You know, three valleys in France, you can half work out where you are. Not a chance in the Alps. And there's a lot of, you know, you're going from town to town and there's some really cool towns in the process.

You're not just skiing one hill. You're going, you know, you have a lot of choice in where you're going with a lot of snow. You can go down to Steuben.

You can ski to St. Christophe very quickly and easily from St. Anton. You can ski all the way to Zuhrs and Lech and back. Correct.

It's a long day, but you can ski a lot of terrain. There is. And the off-piste is probably what the Albergs are famous for, actually.

Our off-piste skiing, once you get away from the piste and you're skiing these big fields of powder snow and then you're away from the crowds, then you get it. Then you're like, wow, now I get what the Alberg is about. Now I realize why it's so famous.

If you want proper downhill racing slopes, Kitzbühel in January is hard to beat. You know, some of these other areas are really, you know, fantastic. But the Alberg is, you're really out in the wild.

I mean, you're talking about a massive national park, untouched. Well, I'm going to sort of go somewhere. We've never had a chance to ski the Veluga together because it's been closed most times early in the season.

It opens up later and I usually come early. Tell us, what's it like taking people up and down that? OK, so Veluga, you can only do with a registered guide who's written on the list. You have to be pre-approved as a guide to be able to take guests up there.

And the problem is that the top part of the Veluga is heavily exposed. The north face, there's this ice in Germany called a platter. So there's a layer of ice that everyone has to ski over and there's no guarantee that it won't slide.

And occasionally every few years, the whole thing goes with skiers on it and the skiers die. So that's the problem with the Veluga, the north face. It happened about six or seven years ago.

They had this German mountain guide with four guests and the whole thing slid. And I think, I don't know, there were two or three deaths. The guide survived and a couple of guests got taken over the cliffs and that was it.

And that's just bad luck. And that's why it's revered. But actually, once you've skied this top, I'd say 200 metres, then you have the most beautiful run of your life in this back valley that goes for about five kilometres of powder skiing all the way down to Zuis.

And it's a famous, famous run. They've taken all the, you know, lots of famous European royal families, whatever, famous people have skied this run. They've all had photos with the guides and it's just one of these classic Alberg things.

But there is a way around all this. You can also ski the west face from the top of the Veluga. And the west doesn't have this problem with this hanging snow.

So you can just step down over the rocks and then you can ski out. And it's also a beautiful run. Fantastic.

So you just ski around the rock, basically you ski around the face and then you come out into the big open bowl. And you're safe. Well, if something slides, there's no cliffs.

But the problem with the north face, which is the revered one, the first set of cliffs is about 40 metres vertical. And then the second set is about 50 metres vertical. That's why you need an experienced guide.

Absolutely. And that makes, well, you have to. I've done the Veluga with, I must have done it at least 200 times with guests, the Veluga, the Veluga North.

And you've never lost a guest yet? No, but people freeze up. You know what I'm saying? And you know, once you start heading down, you can't climb back up. It's too steep.

So it's like, you know, you get these people that, you know, they break down on you and they're like, call a helicopter. And you're like, well, that's great. But, you know, we're here right now.

The helicopter's not going to get you from right here. And you're not injured. And just, you know, keep stepping down.

And you've just got to talk them through it. And you step down. You're not spending half an hour doing something that should take two minutes.

And then you keep on skiing on. But I've learnt to match what the guest is wanting with the terrain. I've learnt through getting it wrong.

I've taken the wrong people down the Veluga. And I've learnt now not to do it with that sort of person. And then you've got people that want it.

And they're the ones, the people that want it are ready for it, you know, mentally. And then they just ski it and get on with it. And it's a great run.

All right. Now that we've scared everyone, what would be your go-to day for, let's say, an advanced skier? Okay. So it's all weather dependent.

And when it last snowed. So if you've got fresh snow, you don't have to be that clever because you can often ski in every direction. But let's say you have, it's the fourth day after a snowfall.

And on the last two days it's been too warm in the afternoon and the snow has gotten a bit crusty. Then all of a sudden the direction you ski is really important. So you want to be sort of skiing that northern sector for powder.

So we have lots of options. We have for northern skiing, we try and do often hikes up in the sun where you ski down in the shade in the north. And, you know, Randall is right there in St Anton.

It's St Anton's little secret. It's this part of the albergue that's not attached to any other part of the albergue. So it's much quieter than the other busy areas.

So Randall's the quick, if you just want to get straight into the powder and not muck around, that's a good option. But we also have these wonderful day tours. We end up skiing to Steuben, down to Langen.

You can come back on the train, for example. Or we have these day trips where you keep going north. So you do the Beluga, then in Zuhrs you ski Madloch down to Zug.

Then you keep skiing all the way almost to the German border. You do these big tours, just all these big famous north faces. Then you come back through Lech and back home.

So there's really endless options. It's quite... That sounds spectacular, some of those long tours. And we've skied Randall a fair amount.

Randall, just for everyone on the podcast, is across the valley, essentially, from the main mountain of St. Anton. So it gets different sun, different light, and the snow conditions are vastly different. That's correct.

The main St. Anton side is called the Lech-Tal mountain range. And the Randall side is a completely different mountain range called the Favell Valley mountain range. So it's a completely different group of mountains.

And that changes the type of snow and the type of skiing. It's interesting. It also changes the shape of the hill too, which is interesting.

Absolutely. Now, not everyone's going to want to go down the Beluga or be advanced who's going over there. What about intermediates? Is there skiing for intermediates? Absolutely.

We have absolutely out-of-this-world skiing for intermediates. There's a big difference between a complete beginner and what I call a... You know someone who's on their third or fourth day skiing and you're trying to get off these complete flat beginner slopes and you're trying to go to the next... That's difficult in St. Anton for particular reasons because of the shape of the mountains. But someone who's skied a few weeks, you know, they've done their 10, 15 days of skiing, they can get around.

Now you're talking. That lets us get up high on these big open bowls and we've got just these beautiful highways of fantastic skiing. And what we also have in the Albert these days is we have the option to download at the end of the day.

So instead of skiing down the icy bumps down into St. Anton with the crowd, we can stay up in the sun, ski on the beautiful groomed piece up the top and then once we've had enough, right at the end of the day, 4pm, we can catch the lift down and it's a great day. So we have some good options. And then we can wake up the next day and head over to Lech in Zuers and spend a day skiing over there.

Then wake up the next day and go to Sonnenkopf, Stuben. You know, we have all these different options. We've never made it down to Stuben, but ski the other ones.

Now that we're on to Lech in Zuers, let's talk about the White Ring. It's one of the more famous runs or series of runs in that area. So the idea of the White Ring is that you follow the sun through the course of the day.

So you start the day skiing the east-facing slopes in Zuers and as the sun starts to head round, as the day goes on, you follow the sun around, you start skiing the southern faces in Lech where you end up having a break, lunch in the afternoon and then at the end of the day, you ski the west faces in the sun all the way back to Zuers. So that's called the White Ring. The idea that you follow the sun all day and for most of the time, 95% of the time, you're skiing in the sun.

And it's a perfect ski tour. And not only that, because it uses about 10 different lifts that never repeat, you have a beautiful tour of the mountains, quite spectacular. It is.

I've done it a few times. I've got some stories about the White Ring too, but I think I've told you those. So another thing I've run into in Anton is every morning you hear the avalanche guns going off and some days it's snowed so much that they shut most of the mountain down.

It's mostly for visibility and for safety. They're pretty safe over there and they take the safety very seriously, but it also holds up some of the ability to get to powder. What do you do when it snows like that? It's true.

It's quite intimidating if you're not used to it, hearing all the cannons in the morning, because they really echo in the valleys. And not only that, you're not ready for it, you hear this huge bang and then there's a five-second delay and then you hear the echo of the snow sliding and you hear it going down these gullies and that echo comes out in the village and you're like, ooh. Then everyone heads into the sports shops, goes and buys an airbag and maybe a Wilco helmet, a strap on a Peeps.

So it helps the sports shops. But what they're basically doing in these storms is they're shutting down the skiing above the tree line where you don't have good visibility. So they're shutting down the upper mountain, but you can ski the lower mountain in the trees.

Now once again, if you're going off-piste, you really are better off taking a guide and the guide will provide you with avalanche safety equipment and then even then you'll go the normal routes, the normal way and you ski in the forest and really the guests coming on holiday with a guide is pretty safe. Not much, you know. And even then we take the safety side very seriously and we brief our guests and we explain everything.

We have fantastic skiing in the forest when there's fresh snow. We have fantastic options. What's your own favourite day in skiing in the Aralberg? When you get to ski without guests and by yourself, what's your favourite day? I love ski touring with skims.

So you put the skims on the skis and then you hike up to a mountain cross and then you sit up there, you eat a little sandwich and you take a couple of photos and then you ski down a different face into a different valley. So you hike up one valley up to the cross and then you ski down another valley back down and most of these tours, they end up taking a full day. So you can only do one mountain peak in a day.

Some of the tours take three and a half, four hours of hiking to get up to the cross and then the vertical is so enormous. It's often 2,000 vertical metres back down to the valley and it ends up taking two hours to ski down and hike out. That for me is beautiful.

Just in the Aralberg alone we've probably got 40 or 50 big ski tours like that. It's quite a challenge to ski them all, to say you've done all the big mountain peaks in the vicinity. But that's nice for me because I'm always in contact with guests when I'm working.

I'm doing all the normal tours. So a day off for me is not skiing something I could do with a guest. Fair enough.

Maybe talk a little bit about what it's like in the Aralberg with the restaurants and the nightlife. St. Anton has famous origins with apres ski. They're credited with pioneering the very first apres ski in Europe and that's through the crazy kangaroo and to some extent the moors of it.

These are these two very famous apres ski bars. These days it's quite commercialised and I'd say what it used to be is different. In the old days you had this coming together of all these international people and that made it really special.

Whereas these days everyone's just on shorter trips and our generations have moved on, John. Not to say we can't enjoy it but the young kids are in there and they're there for real. You see some of them going wild at two in the morning and they drag themselves out at 7am and start getting on the lift.

You got it. You'd be surprised how many meet their future wife in apres ski. You would be staggered.

People get drunk, they let it go and they all have fun. There are also some pretty spectacular restaurants around. You and I have been to a couple up on the hill and you can ski and have a late lunch and have a delightful lunch as opposed to getting in the US you'd get a $20 burger and a coke and be stuck in a cafeteria.

You're sitting out looking at some of the most beautiful scenery and halfway up a mountain. The Albergue has got a way of making you feel special. They make every table in a restaurant have some special feature, some special view, special table, special seat.

The waiter or waitress dresses in traditional clothing. They're very polite. These days there's no issue with talking English.

Everyone just gets on with it. They present the food. It's well done.

They're proud people. They believe in what they're doing. This is all part of the Albergue experience.

Particularly in bad weather you can be unlucky and you turn up there and it's just too windy or for some reason it was sunny in the morning and then it clouds over and it's all flat light. Then you can pop into one of these restaurants and it just gives you that boost. You have a fabulous lunch and you have a beautiful view out the window and you think this is fantastic.

We've got enough special places, enough special restaurants that every day is different. You're right. That makes it well worth it.

If you finish the day and you end up in a town, you've got some special places to go to. It works out really well. How do people find you? What's the best way to get a hold of you? I know you've got a website and we'll plug that in a sec.

I don't self-promote whatsoever. I get a lot of referrals. I've got several ... I actually get a lot of East Coast and Quebec Canadians.

I have people that ski with me and they pass on to their friends and that fills in. You also just get fanatics like yourself turning up in St. Anton and they're going through the internet and they read through and read about. While I do have a website and all that I'm not busy trying to promote it.

I'm waiting for the keen skiers, the die-hard skiers. I can really give them a good time. I can give them exactly what I'm looking for.

They come to me and they say they want to do this, this and this and I can give it to them. You have a pretty good philosophy about how you guide and how you instruct while you're guiding. The albergue is so massive that you can't spend the whole day on a run.

What I'm saying is the terrain will teach you how to ski in the albergue. The runs are so long. Our vertical is so massive and we're trying not to over-teach in the albergue.

I picked this up from the Tyrolians, the best skiers in the world in my opinion are the Tyrolians. They've got the greatest knowledge and you'll find you're lucky if you get a mumble or a grunt out of these Tyrolians. They'll just keep skiing and then at some point if you're really doing something wrong for long enough they'll mumble, do you know what I mean? They'll be like, get your hands wet or whatever.

They'll be like, come on, get on that left foot. You won't hear anything else the rest of the day. If you pick up what they tried to tell you and actually do it, hang on, that worked.

Do you know what I mean? Whereas if you're in Australia and you get your two-hour lesson on some busy run where you're queuing at the lift and you're standing around all day and they're hammering you on technique, I don't know, it's a different philosophy but it suits that terrain in Australia. It's not that they're wrong in Australia. I'm just saying in St. Anton we have different, it's huge.

It's massive. Everyone learns a lot by following you when they're skiing and you learn more from that and learn how to handle the different terrain than anything else. Barney, I want to thank you for joining us.

Thank you very much. Hopefully some of your insights will get to a lot of people out here and I look forward to seeing you soon. Just before I go, I will plug my website for anyone who's fanatical about it.

If you want to get in contact with me, my website is skilikeapro.com and my name's Barney Caddick so you can even try typing that into Google and thank you so much John for having this chat today. It's really nice to talk about St. Anton with you. Cheers.