The Austrian Alps have seen an unprecedented amount of snowfall this season.

Since New Years Day, some parts of the country have gotten up to 4 meters of snow.

But while holidaymakers are generally happy about the snow, it’s causing safety problems for Austria’s mountain towns.

At least 24 people have died following avalanches caused by the downpour in January alone. The latest deaths were 3 German skiers who went missing near Lech am Arlberg.

Crystal Ski Holidays, one of the main British providers of ski holidays, send customers to 38 resorts in Austria, including Lech and nearby St Anton am Arlberg. They said interest in Austria was still strong and all their resorts were open. A spokesperson from TUI UK, who backs Crystal Ski Holidays said:

“We are closely monitoring the weather in Austria which has dramatically improved. Currently all flights are due to depart as normal this weekend and all resorts we operate to are open. We will update customers should there be any changes.”

St Anton am Arlberg has been one of the most hard-hit ski resorts, with PlanetSKI reporting that some places in the resort had seen 4 meters of snow and avalanche risk levels were still at 4 out of 5 this week.

Kine Sandø Kleppe and Simon Kleppe travelled to St Anton am Arlberg on the 5th of January. Both experienced skiers, they expected blue skies and spacious mountain parks but were instead faced with fog, snow and extreme weather conditions.

“The snow would not stop falling, it was foggy and extremely windy.” Kine said, “We even got in a tricky and scary situations, where we were caught in a snowstorm on the top of a mountain.”

St Anton was closed from Sunday the 13th of January to Tuesday the 15th of January. It has since reopened with 74 of its 88 lifts running and 485cm of snow at the summit.

The extreme weather meant that it was difficult and dangerous to ski on some days and put a damper on the idea of the perfect holiday.

But for Kine and Simon, the most important thing was that they stayed safe and got to see nature at its most extreme.

“We had an unexpected amount of snowfall, but we got the best out of it. Even though the weather wasn’t perfect it didn’t stop us from trying to go skiing every day.” Simon said.

“Experiencing the extreme nature is something I’ll never forget.”