Back home in Ljubljana for a few days now, finding myself back, in the normal routine. The last two weeks had been awesome. Spending my time in Innsbruck with my friends, searching for powder, and partying was a really nice change I could get used to. So let’s start the New Year off, with a few nice lines.
See the Schneebrettlawine left of my ear. Thats what happend all they where the sun shined :S
Just before the New Year, I got myself a last minute present. I finally upgraded my head cam, to a GoPro HERO 3 Black edition. Special thanks, to David, from our local shop ENAINTRIDESET, for quickly hooking me up with one of these high-tech babies, which are rather hard to come by in decent quantities. :-). Check out the first of many clips with my new toy below 🙂
Well as I was saying, a lot of things happened so lets start off with our last trip from Sunday, January 6, 2013. Saturday was quite mellow day. For reasons I will explain next time Aljoša, Žiga and myself did a little avalanche exercise at Lizum in dumping super wet snow. Meeting up with our friends for dinner, it was time to decide where we would be trying to find some powder. Checking all the usual sources, showed the really odd picture. Originally we wanted to go West, but it turned out, that a heavy Nordstau was forming in the central Alps so we would be heading into the opposite direction, east, were the biggest dump off snow was expected. The temperature were far too high, and the situation far too dangerous, and unpredictable, to do anything super gnarly. Scouring through charts and maps, we decided we would have to go as far east, as our seasonal tickets allowed. Fortunately for us, that meant, that we would be going to Fieberbrunn, FWT destination deluxe, just a little north of Saalbach.
Ready to rip.
The resorts logo is a pin 😛
Gabi, Clarissa, Žiga, David and me were off early in the morning, when it was pouring in Innsbruck. Temperature was around 5° and as we were heading further east, it wasn’t getting a lot better. When we arrived at the cable car station. It was just 1° and cloudy. The resort, is divided into two parts, connected by a new cable car. Still at the parking lot, getting our gear ready, a few disappointed freeriders, drove by saying, that because of the wind, the upper part of the resort, would stay closed. All this while we could hear explosions, from avalanches, being triggered on the mountain. After all the avalanche level had been classified as level four.
As we got to the station, a few of the lights for the upper lifts started blinking. Good sign :-). As we got higher onto the mountain, it quickly became apparent, that there would be no good riding below 1500 m. The snow was wet and hard and there was lots of it. The humidity was excessive, something, I have to say, I have seen only a few times over the years. When we finally got up to the top, the wind was so strong, that the peak lift remained closed. Fortunately around 2000 m the snow was better. So we decided, to stick around between these altitudes, and find some lines there. In the end, we did find a few chutes, and some nice Woods before they closed the upper part of the resort completely and forced us to get a beer at one of the local Huts finishing the day.
In the afternoon it became tracked quickly before the sun closed shop.
All in all, for the sketchy conditions it wasn’t such a bad day, but until this odd Nordstau passes, and the temperatures drop to normal I`ll sit it out. On a funny side note Žiga went to Obertauern on Wednesday, and said that it was really good. :-).So maybe for the weekend the hunt might go on!
