Category Archives: ski touring Austria

Ammer Range, Pfuitjöchel, ski touring Austria, ski touring Europe, Tour, Tyrolia

Searching for an exceptional life? Try mediocre skiing.

Leave a comment

IMG_2312.jpg

The five guys in my WhatsApp group “Hochtirol”, created for another tour in another place at another time, start pinging each other about where we can go riding this Saturday. Three of them I don’t know so well, and there are no descriptive pictures about who’s saying what, so its not long before I’m completely confused and begin typing in old-man Caps: “WHERE ARE WE GOING? LOSERS.” Or something like that.

Tobi cuts the crap and decides on the Pfuitjöchl, a popular tour right behind Lermoos, just across the Austrian border from Garmisch Partenkirchen. I’ve never been up to this particular spot, but the tour goes up to a big ridge-line which stretches for miles on either side, and I’ve been up to the left and right of it several times.

IMG_2323.jpg

Its a great touring spot in my opinion. There are miles of treeless gentle slopes once you get above treeline, and even if the Germans are lined up like tourists at a cuckoo-clock shop, you can pretty much always find a fresh line by bearing a little to the left or right. Its downside is that the belt of trees at the bottom is pretty tight and gets skied out, making for survival skiing in all but the best years. Its also technically the “wrong” aspect. Fully south-facing, you’ve got to hit it quickly after a snowfall, and there’s got to be a lot of snow too because it is either going to be melted out, or have a crust like week-old bread all over it. Its quite literally on the bright side, however – all the sunshine on that face makes for dicey snow, but average snow in the sun beats good snow in the shade for me most days. When its good there – it’s great.

I picked up Tobi at seven AM at his place, after the drive from Munich. I tanked up and got some croissant fat-nuggets along the way, in wonderment at the people hanging out at the gas station at six in the morning, sucking on smokes and drinking beer while rocking out to techno. At a gas station. Oh well. We met the other guys at the trailhead and started up into the trees and first light.

IMG_2309.jpg

The snow down low was thin. Skiing it proved to be a challenge later in the day, but thankfully, its mostly grass. That’ll go. As the sun peaked out illuminating the surrounding peaks and making for inspirational-motivational quote photos, we made the treeline and started warming up in the sunshine. Badly needed too. It was going at something like minus 10 degrees Centigrade, so my perennially cold fingers were not doing so hot despite the fast pace and all my hatches battened.

IMG_2311.jpg

No stops, and we made the round about one thousand meter climb in about an hour and twenty minutes. The snow was not as bottomless as we had hoped, but at least it was fluffy. On the ridge, the wind was howling, and everyone was happy when we dropped into the shelter of a bowl on the backside, which was the best snow of the day. Its only about one hundred and fifty meters of altitude, but it was creamy and good. We treaded back up, and climbed back to the ridge-line we had just dropped off of a little further to the left.

IMG_2315.jpg
so – who’s the guy on the short and skinnies?

Another rip of the skins was followed by careful skiing down the main face, which proved to be studded with rocks and other undesirables. It wasn’t bad, but when you don’t know what’s down there, you have to ski more carefully – and its not the same. Despite the thinnish snow – I wished for some fatter boards. I took the really light ones out, and my tips weren’t staying up. Faster riding would have helped, but, here again, the danger of shark fins kind of precluded that. I made one cranial snow sample on the way down as a result. So – the next round in the bar is on me – which, with this group, could be a substantial problem.

IMG_2318.jpg
Tobi – checking if his feet are still there. (Thankfully – he seems to have his boot problems licked)

The sun was in full effect, and we had a quick break at treeline for a bite to eat. I recited my usual “reasons why it is great to be me” to the group. Chiefly, I am good-looking, intelligent, and modest. All were in full agreement, so I truncated the usual four-hour listing after about one-hundred points.

IMG_2313.jpg

We skinned back up, passing the only group we saw that day, a group of four, I think, with three ladies and a dude, who had left the skirts at a picnic and made for the ridge to the left of where we had descended. They had been conspicuous in their disdain for their equipment on the way down, skiing more rock than snow on the aspect they had chosen, which led to speculation that they must be the heirs to the Conrad Sports ski-shop fortune. Only people that get new gear every day ski like that.

IMG_2326.jpg

In any case, P-Tex-Rex had broken a nice trail up to the ridge, so we followed it, despite some reservations about coverage. Another five hundred meters or so, and we were up. Mr. Rex had muddled about on the ridge and either disappeared into thin air or dropped off the back side, so the even thinner snow on the face we had just ascended was all ours.

IMG_2325.jpg

It made for entirely mediocre skiing. Which is kind of the point of all this writing. At no point was it awesome, but the combination of sun, good friends, beautiful scenery and a few laughs at my crashes made for a great day. The ride back down through the trees to the car was, as always at this spot, crap – and will probably pay for the Conrad Kids next skis due to the repair work we will need, but all in all, round about one thousand five-hundred meters of skiing was had that I won’t soon forget.

IMG_2319.jpg

Most people can’t say that about their Saturday – but I’ve been fortunate enough to find this lifestyle where I have it all winter long, nearly every weekend. A day at the resort might be objectively better, but subjectively – this is better than ten days at any resort, for sure. Its tough to say why, but I think anyone who’s done it can agree.

At the car, bases were examined, I was cajoled into not driving in my ski boots, and we all agreed we’d do it again in a week or so. It’s going to be a great winter.

Hochfügen, ski touring Austria, ski touring Europe, Tour

Kiddie Patrol on the Kleiner Gilfert

1 Comment


Saturday’s are for resting, so today, despite the super weather, we stayed in bed till late and munched on a big breakfast until nearly midday. My best touring buddy was sick, so I was looking for alternatives. I tried to get my oldest to go for a tour and a Schnitzel up to the Loashütte, but interest was low.


Enter the Kleiner Gilfert. I was able to convince Henry to try a quick yo-yo tour to this peak mostly because we could take the lifts up to the Pfaffenbühl and then just drop off the backside.

I neglected, in a masterstroke of omission, to mention that the climb back up and out is actually much longer than the little 400 meter tour to the Loashütte. Oh well – the weather was FABULOUS!
So my boy is 10 years old. Doesn’t do too badly with a little pow, and will certainly get much better than us very soon. He still bit it – haha! No harm done.


I put him out front. That way, he could set the pace. It was slow, but he kept moving and he wasn’t fooling about with gear, so we made the peak pretty quickly.

Got some nice shots too.



These we’ll keep till he’s big. They’ll be nice.

The peak has a multi-denominational cross on the top. Created by an artist and quite the thing. In reality, the Kleiner Gilfert is not a peak, it’s just a high point on a ridgeline. You won’t find it mother maps. Also – the Gilfert is a peak on the opposite side of the Pfaffenbühl, so even the name is kinda weird. It’s certainly been named by tourists. The tackle up there is selfie-worthy though, so I guess it’s fitting that it’s got a fake name.


We dropped the other side of the ridge in the shade and got at least a few blower turns. Dad tried keeping everyone to the right out of the sun, but neglected to remember that the route cliffs out over there. There is a way down, but it definitely NC-17 and Mom wouldn’t want me barreling our firstborn down that line.

We reversed course and made boot tracks back to the sun-baked slopes frequented by the freeriders crossing out from the resort. Yuck.


The road out was a fast slide, and Henry was happy except for the poling at the end. We made the lot at Hochfügen, and raised a few eyebrows with a kid in tow.

We called mom for a pickup. Everybody was happy and HUNGRY!

But this is my favorite photo of the day:


It’s nice being able to share days like this with my kids. Inreally hope that someday, they’ll like all this as much as I do and I hope they still have places to do it, long after we’re all gone.

ski touring Austria, ski touring Europe, Tour

Sunny powder day at the Proxenstand

Leave a comment


Almost anyway ….. I started out with the plan to head to the Proxenstand because my guidebook told me the whole tour was under the magic 35 degrees and under 1900 meters. The avalanche service has been warning about depth hoar above 1900 on shady north-facing slopes, so my plan was to stay low. I had to search a bit. Close to the hut, but I didn’t want to go to one of my regular places for this kind of situation. I kinda wore them all out last year.


The Proxenstand is a locals tour above Schwatz. Never been there, although it’s just on the other side of the Kellerjoch. The pic above shows the road that runs waaay up to a restaurant up there in the woods on the north-facing side of the Inntal.


You start up through the woods, nothing too thick here, until you break through to the high pasture grounds like this:


Really remarkable, because the whole route is really gentle and just when you think it’s gotta go steep, a route opens up that gets you higher. The way I found was never exposed to any serious slide danger, so when the time came to bend off towards the left for the Proxenstand, a sub peak, I kept going towards this:


Back there, to the left, there is a low angle playground of shaded north powder! The cirque around it is high and steep, but the center of it is raised and forms a natural barrier to the slides that come down off the steep flanks. The way in is flat! You could come here for days in a 4 and as long as you kept the alpha in mind, you could avoid any heavy danger! This place is now on my list of go-to spots! I know some of you will understand my excitement.


It just wouldn’t stop though! I found a stable route out of THAT cirque and into the next drainage on the right (to the west). I gained the ridge, only to find that the ridge wasn’t a ridge, but rather a hanging valley.

I know my map could have told me that, but I hadn’t paid attention and hey – I was only going to the Proxenstand- right?

I followed through that basin, and recognized the Kellerjochhütte – which I’ve been to before, but only from the other side. It became my new goal.

There was a ridge leading up, so I figured I could stay on that and get all the way up. Good thing too:


If you look at the ridge, you can see the self-releases that went all down that north-facing side. These certainly went on the layer of depth hoar that the LWD is warning about. Any safe route would have to stay on that ridge, away from the drop on the other side too – cause by now, I was over 2000 meters. Cue that Kenny Loggins tune….


I gained that ridge, and the Austrians who were already there did a remarkable job of ignoring my existence. Even my physical presence was summarily ignored and two ladies tried to walk through me. I did my best to accommodate them, but the laws of space time made my vaporization quite impossible.

The view is great – you can look over the whole of the Inn valley on one side and the Finsinggrund on the other.


The ride down was perfect ankle deep pow. I had fallen light and has dried out quite a bit. Of course, I doesn’t dry out – what I was skiing on was surface hoar, which can be a drag once snow falls on it, but as a top layer, it’s rad.

I dropped down along my uptrack, staying clear of the north facing side of that ridge enjoying the views and the blue blue sky. The route was flat, so it was all easy cruising, and although I was by no means the first, I still found the goods. Always enough to share.


I dropped back into that first high valley and passed the Proxen alm – which is open in the summer, and looks nice. Those turns in there were the best, and had I had the time, I would have skinned back up to get some more.

The way out through the forest and bearing right took me back to a road and from there a sledding track. I was able to find a few patches of good turns, but there is surely a better way out. I’ll have to come back and find it.

By this late in the afternoon, the alm pastures were getting a little baked, but I muddled through and hit pavement just before the sun dropped behind the ridge.

Nice.

So – a nice place! Good for when you’re looking to stay safe – but there is plenty of temptation, so if you go, make sure to stick to your plan. Well – mostly.