Well after a while we arrived at Stubai. The sun was out and it would be a perfect bluebird day. It had snowed a little (20 cm) two days prior but the base was stable and fix. The temperature had stayed in the nice minus range so the snowpack stayed the way it was. Compact and strong with little pow pockets in the shades. I didn’t expect to get much out of powder hunting but it would turn out to go somewhere completely different… 😛

After a few runs we meet up with our great Bavarian host Gabi who would be my powder apprentice for the next two days. Eager to find new stuff we headed out to search for a few lines. Since Stubai started a kind of powder hunter marketing offensive and suddenly made all the in resort lines fit on a map we stayed clear of those. I know the resort and the area pretty well and that gave us something new to look for. Lines that rarely are driven or require a more creative ascend. 

1. DAUNSCHARTE (3160m)

On z edge XD

Under the Daunkogel there is one more T-Bar lift on the side of the resort. It ends  under the Daunkogel. On the right of the lift is a nice chute and steep coluar that you can climb to the edge of the midpass. On the other side is a 75-80% steep drop to the gigantic and mostly untouched Glacier. On good conditions you could access it form the NE side of the Daunkogel. Judging from the Sattelite photo there is a nice amount of cravases on the Glacier so in high winter you could get out in the Ötztal. It was an interesting contrast. On one side you have this over the top high tech Skiarea and just a glance away untouched terrain. We descended back down the coluar to the skiarea. Gabi mostly snowboarding powder mastered it well even on skis. So I was proud of my padawan XD

Just over the ridge … untouched

Le Drop

2. SCHUßGRUBENKOGEL aka “WALK THE LINE” (3213m)

After the Dauernscharte chute line we went back to the park to check out on our park riding friends. They were doing there rail and box lines so I decided to do another short trek. Kind of a regular when Im in the area and bored of the park. To the left of the park lift way left you can take a shortcut in the direction of the Schußgrubenkogel. You ascend a small bit (around 200 m) and arrive at a ridge plato. From there you can go down, back to the parklift. It´s nothing special but it is a nice cooldown line for the end of the day and you can even get a little drop :P. As the weather was absolutely awesome and the stability of the snow pack allowed some sick shit YOU SHOULD NOT DO (More on that in the Hitnertux post comming up) I decided to “WALK THE LINE” aka the ridgewalk up to the summit. That the pic I now have as my profile pic on all ye mighty facebook. It was fun for a while but I didn´t actually make it all the way to the summit. It was longer then it looked and I decided to turn around and return to the park as I wasn´t in the mood to climb rocks in my ski-boots  It was enough for day one 😛 

I was asking myslef why no one wanted to take the little line with the minidrop… all mine XD

Gabi likes it 😛

On z top XD

3. KLEINER ISIDOR  “CLIMB THE LINE”(3200m)

Well on the next day me and Gabi had another ascend plan. When returning the day before we spotted a nice line driven of the Kleiner Isidor, thats the little peak do your right once you get up with the Windachferner T-Bar directly do your right. Someone had ridden a line from it and I noticed an ascend path from it´s southside the day before on my way to the Schußgrubenkogel. But we wouldn´t make it that easy. We would take the hard route. On the far right of the Isidor you can climb up to the ridge and then follow it up to the summit. its a very stepp assend , narrow with space for only one person and mostly you will have to use your hands to pull yourself up over the stones and cliffs. It has an N-S leaning meaning that the north side is nice for skiing of but not for climbing as the snow is not fixed. That means hand on to the stones and hope they hold your weight. The alternative is the south rige side that has a nasty 400m drop connected to it. Gabi had left at the middle and decided that she would not climb on the nasty stuff so I continued myself to the avalanche control station over the rocks. It was fun until a I came to a opening in between the rocks that only had blowsnow in it. With no alternative I did´t think to much and just climbed . Using my hands as hooks. That cost a lot of energy and at the end of course it got even better because I only could pull myself up over a cliff. As I got to the avastation I was so exhausted that I decided to forgo the last 100m. There were just to many stones to continue on skiboots. And as it was I was geared more for easy tours then for stony ascends. The decent was short and nice. Maybe a little to short. All in all the whole thing was nothing for people with vertigo.

My padawan.. ready to go !

Half way…

I was to lazy to assemble the entire timeleapse:

After that we returned to the park and had some more fun on the medium kicker line and Gabi even managed to do her first rail 😛 On the other hand Manca and Blaž had been shredding all day and had some nice lines on there go pro already. In the end it was so much fun that we all just stayed till the end. More on that in the next post.. coz it was getting dark !