It was party time in St Anton. We were still some way above the town but we could hear the thump, thump, thump of loud music and the cheers of the crowds celebrating another successful day on the slopes.
âShall we?â I asked my son as the flashing lights and heaving bodies at the MooserWirt and Krazy Kanguruh bars came more sharply into focus.Â
âDo we have to?â he said. âThere are nicer places than this.âÂ
Our trip to St Anton in April 2019 came during the last full winter season free of the spectre of Covid-19, with hindsight a golden age of carefree conviviality. Less than a year later, boisterous gatherings of precisely the kind we witnessed back then were playing themselves out in the nearby Austrian resort of Ischgl and were found to have been one of the major causes of the early surges in cases throughout Europe. Some of the first infections in Britain were traced back to Ischgl.