Before our unexpected and happy powder Valentines there were a few other adventures of note. They represented quite the interesting contrast we have gotten used to in the last few winters in the alps. Four resorts on different sides of the alps. One giving us a good February powder day with a good base, one without, another for a sunny day to remember with good friends and the perfect touring day for April, in February.
The Trees of Tauplitz
no base land with lots of fluffy trees
Towards the end of January I was already getting a bit crazy from the lack of powder. Finally a storm was crashing into the Dachstein area and we were quickly set to check out one of the better “used to be” secret spots in the area. The family ski resort of Tauplitz.
My parents were on holiday there a few days prior so I had been getting a lot of good shots form all the regular easy access faces. It looked better then the situation at home or in Tyrol. We drove into the snowstorm while our legendary Slovenian ski-jumpres were competing on the Kulm jump just a few minutes from the resort by car. World series was on. Good for us. This meant relatively small crowds at the resort. It was dumping and viability was crap.But that did not stop us. Finally I got a few face shots that partly restored my sanity :P. Problem was that there was no base at all. So we had to be very carefull. Here and there you hit something. What these things were.. I rather not think about.
After riding fun trees and easy access terrain for most of the day I convinced everyone to head to a place I like to call “magic avalanche bowl”. If you hike to the top of Tauplitz, next to a small old lift that I literally never have seen running, a giant bowl area opens up to the south-southwest. It`s a tricky avalanche prone face with lots of trees on either side and a giant wind pressed cornice. This is the best playground here. Last time we were here two years ago we had one of the best powder days of my life. Good that might have been somewhat of a different life before visiting Japan but still it was a day to remember.
This time thou we learned a hard lesson in tree traversing because in those two years the little trees in the lower part of this bowl area had become bigger. A lot bigger. And a lot more annoying. Add to this the fact that the base was really weak and compressed still only half a meter of fluffy snow had fallen on all of that at -15 degrees. And the “little” trees were not at all to impressed by this amount of fresh snow so they made our way back out of this wonderland maze a bit of a time consuming adventure.
It took us a lot of energy to get back to the road and so as the resort began closing we returned to the bottom station and drank beer at the local bar while watching our Slovenian ski jumpers take another victory back home before driving off back to the sunny and rather spring like Slovenia.
FINALLY Deep at Kappl in Tirol
base is a great thing we used to take for granted
It had been a while since I was in Tyrol. The winter there had been collecting dust, and so did my season ticket, the Tirol Snowcard. But three weeks ago something started to show up on the scopes. A north stau was supposed to bring lots of snow. That was an opportunity I was not going to miss.
I had talked to my buddy Flo, who moved to Innsbruck a while back, that we urgently needed to shred together and since he had told me that they had had a good day at Kappl with an actual snow base a week earlier, I was more then willing to gable and check it out. Problem was the weather. Again it was somewhere between bad and passable. A gamble indeed. Alternative, as always after a dump in Innsbruck, would have been the Nordkette. But it had no base. Our group was split on the decision where to go. Poker.
Even thou we were worried that the upper lifts would stay closed and actually cut off our access to the good terrain Flo and myself stuck to our original plan. Kappl. Two other groups were supposed to meet up later but never showed up. Some were to hung over from an awesome party, the others, in transit, were a bit late and decided to stop at a random resort on the way.
Thanks to intuition and stubborn gut, our gamble payed off. Boy did we hit the jackpot. Kappl might seem like a small family resort but the fact that it is the go too backup destination for the Austrian stop of the Freeride World Tour speaks volumes. Unfortunately due to that fact, it is not the “super secret spot” it used to be. But the crowd was passable. And if you are whiling to hike then bam. Jackpot deluxe. As always the conservative nature of the abundant amount of German riders worked to our advantage here :). We were always a line in front of them all.
I had not ridden with base this season before and we had about 40 cm of fresh. Felt good to get some confidence back. It was an awesome day and Flo even got spotted by a Jerry while dropping a cliff.
LOTS OF friends on A sunny powder day At FISS/Serfaus
sun is not always a disaster if the föhn wind is strong
The day after Kappl the weather changed to bluebird. It also brought the dreaded warm Föhn-winds with it. Since everyone was super motivated and sober after seeing what fun we had the day earlier at Kappl we decided to visit Jakob in Serfaus. A fluffy cuddly big group of people we would be :).
Luka and Urška where there already as they have a cool Mulitvan and can basically just sleep anywhere. Two cars of ours would leave Innsbruck at 8am and the Avengers would assemble at the Waldbahn an hour later. It was the perfect fun setup. But I was a bit skeptical about the snow.
I was expecting the south lines like Kamikaze and Frommes to be useless after a run or two in the morning due to the sun and the föhn. Urgtal and the north side woulds be sketchy but good I thought. Reality was quite the opposite thou. If it all turned to really bad we could always escape into the high terrain at the back of the giant 212 km resort. The lines there are truly endless and will need a lot more exploration.
But as Jakob took us to Frommes run after run it all stayed stable. It was a little perplexing. The snow was not super powpow but it was well within acceptable for a average day. I was somewhat puzzled. Even asour last run at around 4 pm had us descended near Kamikaze under the avalanche triggering system it all stayed where it was. And since we were the avengers it was just soooooooo much fun. I could go for more days like these. Just fun no stress with good friends. So in the end “Lots of friends on powder days.” is also a good possibility :).
Luka and Urška also brought me a fancy pair of SWIX Sonic poles that I will be testing for the foreseeable future. First day showed they were very light and the switching mechanism is a lot better then on my old K2 Party poles. But more on that in a nice review sometime later this season after some more rigorous testing.
April like touring at Sella Nevea in february
Never forget to bring your Ice Axe
The last of these short contrasting stories of adventures from the “middle” of this winter brings us back to the south to our Slovenian powder jewel. Kanin. It was a week before the Kappl jackpot that Simon clicked me on Facebook and suggested we go check it out on a sunny day in the middle of the week. Still being on stoke from our Tauplitz adventure I just could not refuse. So I rang up Jernej from Maribor and soon we were heading into to the Italian side of Kanin to Sella Nevea.
We took the Prevala Funitel to the border at around 2077m and form there casually toured up the wind pressed icepack snow towards the old Slovenian ski resort that was closed a few years ago. We noticed that the connecting chairlift on the Slovenian side was being repaid a little. Read my article on the state of Kanin if you are interested in more background on this tourism disaster.
After arriving at the old cable car station we had two choices. Either we would descent to the west and try to make our way up to the military outpost or we would casually do what everyone does and go up to the “window in the mountain” called Presterlniško okno at 2499m.
We first decided to do plan A and descended but soon discovered that the 80 cm of hard pack were just not enough to make it to the outpost safe. It would be tricky and take far to much time. So we decided to visit the “window”.
That also turned out to be a bit of an uphill battle. Since we all use somewhat fatter skis skinning up on steeps of ice crud is not fun. After some time I decided to just take my skis of, put them on my backpack and ascend with my trusted icepick. After all my Quarks were made to be used :P. That fixed the slow ascend and we were soon taking in the view from the top.
Again here the conditions were a stark contrast to the other adventures. Unlike the waist deep fluffy pow with a good base in Kappl, the baseless fluff in Tauplitz and the stable regular powder in Serfaus this here was windpressed snowice. Regardless it was a good exercise even thou it was more mountaineering then skiing. But you have to be prepared for anything so it was all good. And the perfect bluebird and good company made it even more so. Lets hope that in the coming weeks the winter stabilizes somewhat. After three seasons of these extremes that have become the norm and are becoming more extreme, one can only hope for some stability in the future. Likely thou more “nay” than “yay”. Next up we look at some glaical safty training that we did at the Grossglockner with Vertical Adventures before new years.
Next up we look at some glaical safty training that we did at the Grossglockner with Vertical Adventures before new years.