Spotlight on Ischgl
Spotlit in the very first issue of Mountains Magazine and featured in the Summer 2026 issue, Ischgl is a Tyrolean town in Austria worth visiting at any time of year.
Metres
Ischgl sits at 1,377 metres above sea level in the Paznaun Valley. The ski area rises to 2,872m making it one of the highest ski resorts in Austria.
Days
Sitting high in the Tyrollean Alps Ischgl has an average of 26 snow days per year, with an average of 247cm falling per year.
Beds
There are around 12,000 beds available to visitors in accom modation ranging from 5* hotels to popular mountain huts.
Kilometres
In total the Silvretta area, of which Ischgl is part, has 480km of down hill ski slopes on a total of 145 pistes and served by 101 ski lifts.
Kilometres
Europe’s highest e-bike destina tion, Ischgl has 16 dedicated routes running to 361km. The town recently joined the Gravity Card network.
Restaurants
Despite Ischgl’s size it has three Michelin-starred restaurants: Paznaunerstube (*), Schlossher rnstube (*) and Stüva (**).
The farmers who bought a cable car
Without skiing, Ischgl as we know it today would not exist. Before the 1920s this area was
occupied by a scattering of farms and very little else. People migrated away from both the town and throughout the Paznaun Valley until the 1960s. Then, in 1963, Ischgl’s fortunes changed.
In 1961 the Silvrettaseilbahn AG was formed by 73 shareholders, who were mainly local land-owning farmers. These astute farmers had noticed that the popularity of ski tourism was growing exponentially in Europe. Managing to raise 6,671,000 Austrian Schillings – the equivalent of just under £8m today – through selling livestock and land and taking out expensive loans. Silvrettaseilbahn AG worked quickly to construct what was then Austria’s longest cable car.
From disaster to success
Shortly before the cable car was due to open disaster struck. During a technical inspection the cable car crashed to the ground. Despite this the system was fixed, inspected and ready to launch in December 1963 (55 years after the first enclosed cable car system opened in 1908, and two years before the precursor to the snowboard was invented).
Amazingly Silvrettaseilbahn AG still exists today and continues to be owned by many original shareholders or their families. Today up to 3,440 passengers per day are carried on that original line (although it has, of course, been upgraded many times since 1963). So great has been the success of that original Ischgl cable car that Silvrettaseilbahn AG now own other lines, plus a zipline, plus Ischgl’s massive thermal spa, plus various other tourist infrastructure in the Paznaun Valley, making multimillionaires of those farming families (many of whom use their own cable car to ski, hike and bike down the slopes).