Usually I write about the days out touring, but I do spend a lot of time skiing the resort as well. I’ve got two little kids, boys 10 and 6 years old, so not every day is going to be a 3000 v.m slogfest.

I’ll admit I was conflicted this morning. I wanted to get out under my own power and I even loaded up my touring gear and put on my TLTs but as I was going up to the car it dawned on me that while the powder was OK, it probably wasn’t more than 10cm of it, and my wife and kids were laughing and squealing and I hadn’t had a powder day with them all year. 

It’s not going to be so long before my oldest isn’t really hip to skiing with mom and dad, and once these days are gone, they’ll be gone forever. I shouldn’t pass them up as often as I do.

I’ve always been a solo ski tourer. I actually rarely go with others because it’s almost impossible to find partners who want to go and have time. It used to be easier, but now, everyone has kids and jobs, and frankly, seems like everyone has given the sport up. Most of the people I’m thinking of probably wouldn’t see it that way – but if your three years since your last tour and you don’t have any gear – it’s kind of hard to claim you’re a skier.

It’s not a criticism of them – that’s the way things are for many. I get it. Still – ski touring for me is primarily a solitary activity and for someone like me, with a curmudgeonly personality and a tendency to isolation, skiing with my family is a nice variation and probably beneficial.

The snow was still coming down when we got up the hill to Hochfügen. It’s only about 10 minutes up the hill, so it’s where we ski. We’re not all that big on skiing all over the place and pistes are pistes. Long travel and cost associated with lift tickets at dozens of resorts doesn’t make sense for us. Besides – we know the place, and they know us. If my kids got separated from us, they wouldn’t worry a bit. They’d just ski to their favorite restaurant and get something to drink. Money is not really required because the people who work there know us, and they know we’re good for it. It’s a nice feeling.

The place is emptying out after the Faschings holiday. Normally. – that marks the end of the season for the casual skier – after Fasching, the only people left are the season pass holders, but for now, there are still a few Dutch vacationers in large groups. We got off the piste right away and rode the heavy boot-top powder (?) that had really only just covered the manky leftovers that we’ve been skiing for two weeks.

My oldest, at 10, can really ski. I was impressed watching him plow through the challenging snow and remain light on his feet.His younger brother stuck with Sabine but still was riding the pow – which for him was more like knee deep. It’s a trick for him – but he’s only six- so the fact that he skis powder at all is pretty cool.

In any case – both of them were getting attention for their skills from the people on the T-bar that we kept skiing near. It made me a proud Dad, and I recognized again that in another five years or so, it’s likely my oldest will ski better than I do. That’s a good thing.

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And then the sun came out!

We made a few more runs enjoying the refreshed winter scenery and the warm weather. I followed the kiddos into the woods and had to break off – they were going into gaps so small, i just couldn’t fit! They just laughed at me.

It wasn’t long before the both of them were tired and needing a warm spot to sit, so we ended the day, like most, at the cafe in the gondola building, where we get what we want without having to order. 

It was a great day – and I’m looking forward to the empty slopes and the warm sunny days in the high mountains that remain. The best part of the ski season is just starting…..

PS – if you are thinking about getting after it tomorrow- be very careful. The wind was massive yesterday and now, with the new snow, you can’t see the wind loaded stuff. It’s not well bound at all. I was able to stomp on and slide anything with more than about 30 degree angle, and that was in the resort!

Yeah – so it’s that time again. ISPO in Munich, And my Fakebook feed is blowing up with golden oxes to consumerism. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love gear. But it’s a love-hate relationship. It’s fun to geek out on all that stuff, and some of it is worthwhile, but ski-touring didn’t used to be about the kind of pants you wear, and the mainstreaming of the sport has brought both good and bad. 

People getting into the sport feel obliged to drop about 4 grand before they even get lost at the trailhead, and nothing is as universally derided as the underequipped tourer. It wasn’t always like this. Ski tourers used to be hippy non-conformists who were notorious for never buying anything – which is why the ski companies ignored them for so long.

The ISPO highlights all this outdoor gear in a glittering convention hall, complete with fizzy drinks and phat beats, both served up by babes in the kind of clothes you can’t wear to church. I do get it. It’s an industry show, and the people in the industry live from this gear. They need that show. What I don’t get is the tendency of hordes of laypersons (i.e.: people who do not work in the industry) that beg, borrow and steal to get access to the show. There is nothing to buy there, and if you are really into skiing, then the show falls in one of the prime skiing weeks, so me, I’d rather go skiing.

The show has a noticeable effect. Routes that are usually full have about 30% less traffic on them. Sometimes you get a group of Americans or French out that have obviously travelled here for the show, but most people seem to stick to the Convention center and environs.

Today was kinda beat by most counts. Weather was crappy, with weather moving in by 11am from the west and south, flat light, and a snowpack that has suffered greatly due to warm temps and rain up to nearly 2000 meters. Combined with the show – there was only one other car at the tourers lot in Hochfügen. I didn’t really have much hope, but I figured if it was really crappy I could always jam up the Kleiner Gamstein and roll by the Loashütte for a frosty oat soda.

The other car was a clown car from the circus with about 15 Czechs in it. All geared up with dangling helmets, skin savers (dead giveaway) and size stickers on their boots. They were getting all stretched out, so I started out. I’d see them later….

I followed the road up until it branched off to the Loas Sattel and then up the face in gentle switchbacks. Along the way, I could see that the slope had been tracked out and melted, but had refrozen, and due to the increasing wind, there was a little dust on crust. Looked supportable.

I made the top without seeing a soul, and busted a track down skiers left through the loose trees until I hit the track to the Loas Sattel. This is really the best way to go down the Kleiner Gamstein. Usually everyone goes right down the wide open face they climbed up. It gets really tracked out! Additionally- the face is sunny and gets nailed by the wind. It rarely is all that good. 

The trees to the left are widely spaced. Anybody can ski them, and their shade and wind protection does wonders for the snow. If you know the place, you can ski down through open patches all the way down to the road to Hochfügen, easily doubling the ski length. There is even a spot to park there. Don’t tell anybody.

The track out is a good option if you don’t know where you are. I took it, cause I was feeling good and ready for another up. I rode over to the down and outdo the Sonntagsköpfl, and skinned up. 

After about 15 minutes, I found a skin track set by Hannibal’s Army – so wide, so busted, so…..flat. Honestly- I was perplexed. Usually I go all curmudgeonly ranting about those too-steep skintracks, but this baby was pushing all the wrong buttons.

I followed it. I figured flat is ok, and hey, you can’t complain when somebody’s trying to do the right thing.

Then I saw em. Those Czechs. In the time I had boosted the Kleiner Gamstein, they were over here busting up snowflakes at 60 vertical meters an hour. They had a leader, a little more experienced, that was marching them up the steepest and most consistent slope on the hill. To his credit, it was he who set that nice easy slope, but he was also forcing them to kick turn all the way up that mountian.

None of them had ever done this before. Too much gear, heavy and perched precariously on their backs, was making their movements almost robotic. Their alpine-oriented skis, in 195cm lengths, were almost impossible for them to swing around and like most, their attempts to step UP to the next track was wearing them out and ripping their skins off their tails. 
I made the tail end of the coda in no time, and was greeted with that mix of friendliness, shame and pride that you often get when passing a group of beginners. In case you think I’m looking down on them, you should go and read my post about the first time I went ski touring. I know how it is. I was one of them too, and I looked far worse than they did.

I always want to help – but helping without being asked is kind of a jerk move, especially in this sport where pros are the only acceptable measure of success and everybody else is a loser geek. So I slid by with a smile. If i could have, I’d have tried to show them the kick turn, and told them to chuck 90% of that gear the guy at the shop told them they needed for what is, essentially, a short walk in the snow. Seriously – somebody sold one of those guys a sat phone. It was perched on his shoulder strap.

The snow up here was better! Not as affected by the rain, and since the top gets kinda rolling, there were lots of little runnels that were fairly flat filled in with wind transport. 

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I love it when a plan comes together!

Blower blower blower – all the way down! Flat light, but the little hills, and the few trees on the north-facing shady side made for good contrast. Boot-top gold.

I love that slope. The hill is popular, but for reasons unclear to me, people don’t tend to ski that north side. Obviously – that’s where you go first for good snow, but I think people get lured by the slope to the skiers right, because it is in the sun, and has more trees. Not enough to stop a slide, but false security, I guess. All I know is, that slope facing north and dotted with a few trees is sitting just above the magic 30% and is always filled with the goods. Again – don’t tell nobody.

I skated out the road and met the Czechs again at the trailhead. Tired. They looked. Anyway – my smiling kids were all packed up in their car seats and my wife was singing show tunes in a heated car just for me.

ISPO ain’t got nothin on this!

Roundabout half a meter of fresh in two days! The Berge are looking the part: white all over the place! All we need now are a couple bus loads of Dutch tourists and some Russian culture-luddites and you’d think it was Christmas!

I’ve read my fakebook feed, and I’ve been out there sniffing the produce and despite the breathless instagramming and pictures of dudes getting shacked – I’m reminded of the timeless words of that master of prose: Flavor Flav -Don’t Believe the Hype!

While it’s a good start, the first half of that snow fell with considerable transport, so you got wind-loading combine with bare nuts all over. The temperatures were really low, minus 17 yesterday, which used to be kinda normal but now causes hyperventilating, so the snow is fluffy and weightless – all the way to China. And when I say China, I mean bare rock.

So you kinda got two choices: 1) run the rapids, watch the P-Tex fly and hope when you fall that your motor centers remain intact or 2) roll the amp all the way to eleven and hope that when it all comes down behind you you live long enough to tell anybody stupid enough to believe it that you were performing “stuff management.”

Another dump. Then you can blow up all your followers. Don’t forget to jack your retention to 16.

Today – I went out with my oldest (10) for a event run by MC2alpin in Kutai- “kids on tour.” A guided ski tour for kids from about 8 to 14 with the possibility to rent gear that they need to tour. For 29 euros! All day program. No parents allowed!

They ask that the kids bring their own alpine skis and boots, and then they get hooked up the a contour start-up touring adaptor, a kind of BCA trekker for kids made of plastic that is more about reality than radness. It works really well, and my son has been using his for two years now! They also have kids skins- relatively inexpensive skins with kid-rotator-cuff friendly glue. Both of these things are Werner Koch’s baby over at Contour – and he’s doing great! Products like these do more to build the sport than Dead Bull – but get less press. Too bad.

They took off for some some low angle, easy-peasy powder and parents who were so inclined were treated to a guided tour with newbie tips and a beacon refresher course. Nice!

I was cold. It was minus 7 out and I was dressed to make like somebody was chasing me, but the tenor of the day was Sunday stroll with the hounds. Nuts. I got a refresh on some info, so it was worthwhile. It’s amazing what you forget after a while, and maybe the searing pain in my fingertips will serve to imprint this info more permanently into my cerebellum- like that time I tested my BB gun on my leg.

Henry was warmly dressed (no dummy) and had a good time. I was able to get a series of linked turns through some trees down to the bottom and didn’t blow an edge doing it, Henry and his new buddies were making remarkable turns for a group of pre-teens through what was, for them, over the knee.

Everybody was happy. 

Tomorrow I gotta fly all the way to summer in California- but I’ll be back by next weekend, so look after the pow, and let me know where all that snow blew to so a can shralp it when I gets back – K?

Looks like a dream is all I’m gonna get.

Not just in Colorado…..

We’ve had almost no natural snow in the Zillertal, so the only touring is on the piste at the local ski resorts. While this is hugely popular, I’ve stopped doing it. The numbers have increased even compared to last year, and my opinion is that it’s getting a bit out of hand.

I know many won’t agree with me. That’s OK – but I am a resort skier with my kids too, and the current trend has become a distraction, and if I’m being honest, a bit of an annoyance. I don’t have a problem with practice per se, but the numbers are such that on a few days, there are more going uphill that down. BTW – before getting out your knives to cut me to pieces, keep in mind that I also am of the opinion that the profilation of high-speed quads (6,8…10s?) leads to a dangerously overcrowded piste as well. Nobody remembers standing in line for the lift anymore, and it sucked, but it also meant that at any given time, there were far fewer poeple actually on the slope. The trend towards uphilling exacerbates this. 

An obvious solution would be for dedicated uphill tracks, and a few places have them, but even there, it seems like an awful large percentage of people don’t stick to them, so the plan is kinda moot. In Bavaria, the law says that ski tourers can’t be restricted. There was a court case a few years back that settled this pretty definitively. While I’m generally in favor of free access, I think in this case, prudence and a willingness to co-exist should reign the day. In Tyrolia the law is different, and it’s fairly certain that if the resorts wanted to ban the practice outright, they probably could. If things continue as they have, they may well do so.

Back to ski-touring. I mean: not at a resort. I’ve seen some reports from over towards Stubai saying something might go there, but it is a no go in my neck of the woods. The forecast is calling for a rainy Christmas- so I’m loading up on booze for a remarkable New Year’s Eve party. Make lemonade, you know.

If you’re a tourist headed out for your Christmas ski vacation, the good news is that the pistes are in remarkably good shape. The snowmaking guys have done an excellent job and most every piste is open and well grippy – so you can have a bunch of fun zipping down the slopes and dodging the tourers – or being dodged, as the case may be.
If you’re about on New Years and you see some guys with a ginormous outdoor disco-dance floor complete with lights and disco ball, playing Schlager and wearing Björn Borg costumes – then say hello. That’ll be us.

There’s no way to say it nicely – this winter kinda sucks. Its the worst I’ve seen since moving here about twenty years ago, and I’ve seen a few bad ones before – but nothing like this.

At the moment, the snowpack is extremely thin – many places have less than a meter of snow on the ground, and seeing bare spots at 2500 meters is not unusual. Worse than this though, is the combination of the thin snowpack and a weak depth-hoar layer. Although improving due to stable temperatures and additional snowfall, the snowpack has spent most of the last three weeks plus at a level three on the avalanche warning scale – and if I’m honest, I think it would have been a four if there had been enough snow to cause damage to buildings.

A lot of people forget that that warning scale not only attempts to estimate the likelihood of avalanches – it also factorizes the potential damage those avalanches can cause. This commonly becomes difficult to evaluate for winter sports folks right around the break between level three and level four. The last few weeks, we’ve seen many days where the likelihood of a slide is close to a level three/four – but there was so little snow that the scale did not justify going to a higher danger level.

Of course – this only matters if you are a highway maintenance manager or a forestry agent. These people care about the size of avalanches – small ones are no big deal for them, but big ones can take out their crop of lumber, or potentially tear out a bridge or similar. If you are a skier – every avalanche is deadly – so the damage estimates don’t really matter so much.

Every year it seems we have at least a couple of days which straddle this difficult to judge line. Patrick Nairz over at the Avalanche Warning Service Tirol has taken to calling them “critical level threes” – which I think is a good idea. I also bet that if we see changes in the whole system in the next decades – you’re going to see changes right in this area.

So the end of the story is that I’ve been picking around the hills and sticking to safe slopes under twenty-five degrees and being really careful about the old twenty-four hour rule. As far as ski-touring blogs go, its pretty boring stuff.

Worse still – I think we’re in for more of this. We’re well into the season now – and even if we get a big dump or two of snow, we’re not likely to ever reach anything near a normal snowpack. That depth hoar layer is not going away, I think, until we begin to have consistent springtime temperatures and the snow goes isothermic – but of course when that happens, it’ll be melting, and there’s just not that much there to melt. I expect to have to tip-toe around the mountains all winter now – followed by a pretty short spring skiing season. Its not a year for big goals.

I’ve been getting some time in with the kiddos in the resort though…..this could be the coolest stoke EVA!

And I bushwacked with Anonymous John.

NOT A PICTURE OF ANONYMOUS JOHN ON THE INTERNET

hes very sensitive about this

Tobi was out to tag rocks on the Lampsenspitze…..

and I even went touring with my oldest for the first time up a forest road!

There is some good fun to be had when the sun is out and you’ve got a spot with no worrisome inclines. I’ve had a good time despite everything hitting a few unspectacular lines I’ve watched from the road for years. I hope others will slowly take the hint too. Every time it snows there are people getting buried. The snowpack has a long memory – things that happened in November are still relevant….even if you can barely remember it.

Let’s see what we can make out of it!