Lea Hartl

The Alpine region lies under a large-scale high-pressure bridge that stretches from the Azores to the Baltic Sea. With a generally flat pressure distribution, a low pressure system in south-eastern Europe is holding back and dampening temperatures. The calm, mostly sunny weather is expected to continue until the weekend.

The weather will remain windy and generally mixed for a few more days. From the weekend onwards, high pressure will increasingly prevail and, in keeping with the meteorological start of spring (March 1), the coming week looks very sunny and mild.

ISPO, an interesting but also very exhausting trade fair, has been moved from its usual date in January to the autumn. Nevertheless, we endeavour to provide an overview of market innovations at the usual time! As we were unable to scrutinise the material ourselves at ISPO, the information is based on press releases from the manufacturers, not all of which are sent out by any means. So: No guarantee for completeness!

February develops a "Febrile" character and brings us a few days of mild, very spring-like weather before it becomes more unsettled and cooler again towards the weekend. Deep winter cold is not in sight, the snow hopes are focused on "mountain winter" due to westerly weather.

Everyone should have noticed by now: It's snowing. As predicted by the oracle, the amount of fresh snow in the Nordstau so far is impressive. The 48-hour difference in fresh snowfall on the Seegrube is over one meter and there is likely to be more to come today. Other reservoir locations have been similarly richly endowed. Almost the entire northern Alps have a 4-meter forecast for today.

Sun in the west, cold and snow in the east - this is roughly how the current and future weather situation in Europe can be summarized. At the moment, this means snow chaos in Athens and drought in the Western Alps, among other things. The dividing line between cool "summer" and picture-book winter will move closer to us again over the next few days and, as is so often the case, there is cause for cautious hope. But beware: those who hope may be disappointed!

PG partner Evoc not only produces the well-known backpacks, but also a wealth of practical luggage in which you can transport your 7 (or 70) things around. From bike and ski bags to photo bags and toiletry bags, everything is included. Today we are focussing on the Evoc Gear Backpack.

The Air HS jacket from Mammut's Aenergy series is designed as a ski touring jacket. The material should be windproof, waterproof and hard-wearing on one hand, but light and breathable on the other.

Silke Griesser wrote her master's thesis on force measurements in compression tests (CT) and presented the results as part of the monthly ÖGSL lectures. As usual, you can watch the video of the lecture and the subsequent Q&A session on YouTube.

The high pressure weather continues to accompany us. It will remain very sunny up to and including the weekend. Temperatures will rise and it will be a lot milder again, especially at higher altitudes. High fog will hang in many valleys and it will be much colder than in the mountains thanks to inversions. Weather change with a chance of fresh snow next week.

John Forrest has been a mountain guide for 35 years. He has also practiced his profession in the Alps for several years in the summer months, but he lives in Canada and has been running a heli-skiing company there for 20 years. Northern Escape Heliskiing (NEH) is based in Terrace, in the very north of British Columbia.

A recent SLF study uses GPS tracks from the Skitourenguru.ch database to correlate avalanche accidents with the number of accident-free ascents. This makes it possible to calculate which danger levels and terrain characteristics are particularly risky. There are some interesting differences to the reduction factors known from the Munter reduction method.