The usual Mountain Madness season kickoff: we book in advance, ski whatever snow we find, we drink beer and have fun and return with that specific wintery feeling.
This year was a little different as it had already snowed (a lot!) and it continued snowing during our stay in one of Austria’s hidden snow traps: Schröcken.
Just 10k before the hotel we had to put on chains to get to Schröcken and at 5am we had to dig ourselves into the parking lot, which had been cleared by the owner before he went to bed at 10pm. It had over 50cm of fresh, fluffy snow..
Day 1
We explored the terrain of Warth; avalanche conditions were tricky with clear signs of wind and quite some slabs, but within gullies we found deep deep fluffy snow. For for our on-piste-crew most of the runs were open and groomed. Add some schnapps and a good lunch and you can imagine we all had a great day! (We enjoyed the day so much we had to descend the ski-route to Schröcken in the dark.. )
Day 2
What’s better to start the day off with than a little 2 hour ski-tour along the ski-route we had descended the previous evening. It continued snowing so we had freshies all the way. After a strudel and a ski change; we went over to Lech. Meanwhile conditions had worsened and light snowfall had changed into heavy snowfall. Also Lech hadn’t much lifts and runs open, so we quickly returned to Warth and did some off-piste runs between the trees and the short-cutting the ski-route..
Day 3
Last day; so most of us were a bit hung over and we had to get the chains off to get to Diedamskopf, which is a little en-route to home. Sight on the Diedamskopf was close to null but there was over 50cm of freshies on the piste. A bit harder for our on-piste-crew but off-piste it was close to bottomless! After some runs we found our sweet spot: a big field just below the mist and right into the trees. we spent the rest of the morning trashing all the variants of it.. after that, it was the ski-route down (with a great slam of our snowboarder), lunch and onto the Autobahn home..