At happy hour in Mittersill, Austria, a bunch of skiers walk into a bar.
The bar is the Platzhirsch, to be exact—a small, wood-adorned watering hole barely bigger than a tiny house. The skiers are a handful of industry folks who—in various capacities—build, sell, market, review, analyze, and breathe skiing. They just completed a tour of the ski factory a quarter-mile up the hill, where a black Blizzard logo blazed onto a white tower dominates the Mittersill skyline.
We cozy up to a live-edge table with a booth. Somebody says, “Damn, that was impressive.” Tall bottles of lager clink.
Mittersill’s heartbeat has pulsed skiing since before 1945, when Anton Arnsteiner returned from war and started making skis in his family’s workshop. Less than a decade later, the Blizzard brand introduced skiing’s first polyethylene bases plus metal and fiberglass layups. Fast forward 70 years and a slew of innovations, and the Mittersill factory cranks out tens of thousands of pairs of skis each year. An entire North American market demands freeride models (guilty!). A second factory in Ukraine fills European rental- and package-ski quotas. The barn-looking building adjacent to the factory, which houses Blizzard’s race-focused operation, is so shrouded in secrecy that it feels like we definitely shouldn’t talk about Fight Club. And guys like Stefan Moser (Blizzard’s lead ski designer), Gianluca Bisol (International product manager), and Steiner Thornsten (Blizzard’s marketing lead for Germany, Switzerland, and Austria) take on a celebrity quality.
By the time we’ve devoured (another) Schnitzel dinner and Bisol starts his five-hour commute back home to Italy, I’m stewing on a few takeaways as I order a last Weissbier. For one, set against the backdrop of Europe’s ski history, I feel tinier than a stellar dendrite. Two, we sometimes take big brands for granted, lumping them all together in a conglomeration of mass-produced goods; Blizzard’s operation is defined by a labor-intensive attention to detail that prioritizes hands-on quality control and teamwork over cutting corners. And three: I need to come back here to ski again.
Here’s a collection of the sights from Blizzard HQ:
When Bisol turned the Anomaly and Black Pearl skis inside out, it drove home the brand’s attention to detail. It’s no small task to replace classic skis like the Brahma and Bonafide, and they didn’t take the ordeal lightly. Read about the new skis in our 2025 Blizzard Skis Preview.
Blizzard’s proprietary True Blend woodcore consists of intricately placed strips of various wood types, which are sourced sustainably in the Alps. I was struck by how engineered even the un-milled and un-shaped cores were. Each Blizzard ski with True Blend requires its own cocktail of woods (which can even differ by size), meaning a single core consists of multiple wood types in various arrangements.
More than a dozen people touch a Blizzard ski from start to finish. The process takes more than a week for each pair of skis. Rather than feeling like the brand uses robots to build skis, I left the factory feeling like it’s hard not to call Blizzard a “handmade” ski company.
