If there is one place perhaps everyone who has ski-vacationed in classic St. Anton, Austria has likely staggered out of, it’s the piste-side Mooserwirt. Now, there’s a place to crash. 

The new four-star Das Mooser Hotel (it opened last year) is a boutique lodge that is literally attached to what is the self-proclaimed “probably the worst ski lodge on the Arlberg.” No more staggering through town looking for your bed. Now, you can virtually fall right into it.

There is probably no livlier place to be in all the world of skiing once the lifts begin to slow down for the day. Figure on a few dances on tabletops and the consumption of about 2,500 litres of beer every afternoon and evening. That can rise to more than 5,000 litres in the peak of the winter season. 

There’s DJ Gerhard, who has been around longer than disco was a craze, and you most certainly can dance and sing along to what are often described as the “cheesiest songs ever written.” The simple farm house built by Eugen Scalet’s great, great grandfather, who came from Italy to farm in the 1880s, became the Mooserwirt bar in 1989 when Scalet sold his herd. The rest is alpine legend.

The house was rebuilt about a decade ago to hold more skiers and he installed a subterranean layer of mechanized beer, gluewein and spirit parlors where the milking parlors once operated.

The Mooser Hotel is now St. Anton’s only ski-in, ski-out hotel and it is literally carved out of the mountainside.. It has 17 large rooms and suites across three floors. A two-story spa includes several saunas and a big heated pool above the river. Another bar and restaurant are in the eaves above what was the Scalet’s original bedroom.

Scalet recently told a reporter from the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, “I was born here the son of a farmer and raised to nurture my flock. Now I nurture tourists instead of cows.”

What It Means: The new Mooser Hotel is a welcome addition to the St. Anton scene and being literally co-joined with the infamous Mooserwirt Bar makes it even more convenient. I personally recall a visit to the Mooserwirt when I wish a bed had been nearby. In fact, there has been somewhat of a renaissance in town with several re-builds of older properties, all by locals, not outsiders. That Playboy magazine reporter was right, years ago, when he dubbed the Mooserwirt “the mother of all ski lodges.”