I'm not sure it's really of much use to you in making a decision (you'd need both), but I've been to Saalbach two or three times. It's a nice enough place - pretty leisurely skiing for the most part, although there are a few tough nuts on the Schattberg side - 14 coming down from Zvölferkogel is pretty serious stuff.

The après-ski is taken quite seriously, but that's standard operating procedure in most Austrian resorts. I'd say the only thing stopping me from going there except on quite short notice is that it's not awfully high: in a bad year you can find the runs down to the village are pretty disgusting by the time you want to head home. Sometimes they don't even exist, since Saalbach is only at about 1050m a.s.l.

So your mileage varies, and it does tend to mean the season is a bit shorter than some other places, especially with all those south-facing slopes on the "easy" side.

Hope someone delivers on the other place...

thanks for the reply have been reading more about obertauern and it sounds better because it is higher and having just come back from obergurgl it sounds very similar to this all replys welcome.