Bad Gastein or Kitzbühel: the height, or the town and the night

Altitude: Bad Gastein is in a different league on the hill

Bad Gastein's village sits at 1,000 metres, 200 above Kitzbühel's 800. Both are low. The difference is above them. The top of the skiing we measure at Bad Gastein is 2,644 metres, 676 above Kitzbühel's 1,968.

That carries right through the piste. Half of Bad Gastein's piste is at or above 1,800 metres, against 11 percent at Kitzbühel, 52nd of the 55 resorts we cover on that measure. Above 2,000 metres, Bad Gastein has 27 percent of its piste. Kitzbühel's skiing does not reach that high.

Neither counts as snow sure on our measure, and nobody can promise snow at either. Bad Gastein misses by a whisker: half its piste is at or above 1,800 metres, where our test asks for more than half. Kitzbühel misses by a distance, and our own guide is plain about it. It leans on snowmaking for the main runs, and the advice is to go in January or February. If your dates are early or late in the season, that is the whole decision made.

Size: Kitzbühel has more piste around the town

Kitzbühel's skiing spreads across the Hahnenkamm, above the town, and the Kitzbüheler Horn across the valley, with a ski safari out towards Kirchberg. Its quoted size is not one we have classified yet, so we go by our own measurement: 135 kilometres of piste around the town, about 29 more than the 106.6 we measure around Bad Gastein.

Bad Gastein's own area is 83 kilometres. The Ski amadé pass is quoted at 760, but that covers five regions that are not all joined to each other, and our data counts four separate areas down the valley alone. It is a pass for days out, not a domain you ski end to end.

The skiing: Kitzbühel has the black, Bad Gastein the steep

Kitzbühel has 34 kilometres of black run, the most of any of the 55 resorts we cover, a quarter of its piste and four times Bad Gastein's 8.2. Its piste also has the third most even split between easy, red and black of the 55 resorts we cover, so every level gets a fair share. It has more blue and easier piste too, 63 kilometres against 41.

Who each one actually suits

Kitzbühel suits people who want a real town as much as a ski area. It is a walled medieval centre with painted fronts and cobbled streets, and the skiing came to it, not the other way round. It is home to the Hahnenkamm races on the Streif, and you can ski a recreational version of the course yourself. The evenings are among the liveliest in the Alps, from loud bars to quiet cocktail corners, spread across a town rather than one strip. Intermediates who like to cover ground, groups of friends and couples all do well, and the town has its own railway station.

Bad Gastein suits people who want the spa and the scenery as much as the skiing. Our read on it is grand and characterful: faded belle époque grandeur and thermal spas, and a resort we class as traditional rather than lively. It suits confident intermediates who like a steep red, and anyone who wants a low, historic base with skiing that reaches high.

The bit nobody tells you

Kitzbühel has the most black run of any resort we cover, and the Streif gives it a fearsome name. Measured from the gradient, its blacks are some of the gentlest of the Austrian resorts we cover. They average 25.9 percent, 12th of the 13, and nearer the Austrian red average of 23.4 than the black average of 30.3. Its reds average 20.3 percent, the gentlest of the 13 Austrian resorts we cover. The Streif is the exception, not the rule.

Put the two together and something odd happens. Kitzbühel's bigger area at 29 percent steep and Bad Gastein's smaller one at 37 percent come out level in kilometres of steep piste. Kitzbühel is the better mountain for an intermediate who wants to tick off black runs without being frightened by them. Bad Gastein is the one whose reds will make a confident skier work.