From Ljubljana airport to the ski slopes

Ljubljana airport is an unusually good place to start a ski trip, and almost nobody books it that way. Within two hours of Brnik there are slopes in two countries, and the Austrian ones are closer than people expect because the Karawanken tunnel goes straight through the mountain rather than around it.

Winter flights are booked in autumn, so this is the month to work out how you are getting from the terminal to the snow.

The Slovenian side

Small, close and cheaper than the Alps proper. Nobody comes to Slovenia for the vertical, but for a family week or a few days bolted onto a city trip it does the job.

• Kranjska Gora, 85 km from the airport, about an hour. €105 for the saloon and €145 for the five-seat van. The resort is walkable from most hotels, so you need no car once you are there.
• Vogel above Lake Bohinj, 80 km, about an hour and a quarter: €100. The skiing is up a cable car from the lake, and the lake in winter is worth the trip on its own.
• Krvavec is the odd one: it sits directly above the airport, twenty minutes away, and is the only resort in Europe you can reasonably ski on the day you land.

The Austrian side, which is nearer than it looks

Carinthia begins 60 km north of Ljubljana and the tunnel does the hard part. These are proper Alpine resorts and the drive is shorter than from most Austrian airports.

• Bad Kleinkirchheim, 130 km, about two hours: €190.
• Nassfeld, 145 km, a little over two hours: €205.
• Kaprun and the Kitzsteinhorn glacier, 265 km and around three hours: €320.

Compare that with flying to Salzburg or Klagenfurt, where the fares are usually higher and the connections fewer. A cheap flight into Ljubljana plus a private car often beats the direct flight, and it beats it by more the larger your group.

Skis, boards and the boot bags

This is the part that goes wrong, and it goes wrong at the kerb rather than at the booking stage.

• Ski bags are long and they do not fold. Four people with skis, boots and a week of clothes is a van, not a saloon, whatever the head count says.
• Say at booking that you have ski equipment and how many sets. It changes which car comes, and it is the one detail people leave out.
• Boot bags count. They are bulky and there is one per person, on top of the suitcase.
• If you are hiring skis at the resort rather than bringing your own, say so: that is a different car and often a cheaper one.

Winter driving, honestly

Slovenia requires winter tyres or chains from mid November to mid March, and the police enforce it on mountain roads. Austria has the same rule in effect for the same months. A transfer arrives on winter tyres because it has to; a hire car arrives on whatever the desk gave you, and the excess is yours if the road is icy and something happens.

The Karawanken tunnel is open in all weathers and the toll is already in our price. The alternative passes are not: the Vršič road above Kranjska Gora shuts for the winter entirely, which is the single most common wrong assumption we hear.

Snow does not usually stop a transfer, but it changes the timing. If the forecast is bad on your departure day we set off earlier rather than driving faster, and we say so the evening before.

Getting home afterwards

Book the return at the same time as the outbound. Sunday afternoons in season are the busiest hours of the week on these roads and the last thing you want after six days of skiing is to be arranging a car from a hotel lobby with tired children.

The price is fixed before you travel, tolls and waiting are in it, and cancellation is free up to 24 hours ahead, so booking both legs early costs nothing if the plan changes.