Lukas Ruetz

A few days with very poor snow quality and extremely high temperatures due to the foehn are behind us. With the right exposure, slope steepness and altitude, it was already possible to ski a preliminary firn stage.

As of December 7, 2019, the newsletter of Lawinen.report has to be discontinued due to a change in the terms of use of the Facebook subsidiary. But there are alternatives to stay up to date!

The great early winter conditions south of the Inn are continuing. There is now another 20 cm of fresh powder locally. Avalanche conditions, snow quantity and snow quality are in an optimal range for early December.

In the Southern and Central Alps there is often already a very thick snow cover. Weak layers that have been built up (old snow problem) can only be found on glaciers directly on the glacier ice. In other words, where the snow from early fall has remained. Otherwise, the snowpack structure is very good - and will most likely remain so in the snow-rich regions.

High Dorit and Erika have been bringing warm and practically precipitation-free weather for many days. On the sunny side, you can now find spring-like conditions with firn, depending on the altitude. On the shaded side, you can still catch a few turns of good powder - at least where the wind hasn't worked - despite a zero degree limit of over 3,000m at times. Why?

In addition to war zone-like reports from the Alps and #Powstria, you can currently also read headlines such as: "Skier suffocates in meter-high snow". In addition to the high risk of avalanches, days of intense fresh snowfall are accompanied by completely different dangers.

Since the 2018/19 season, there has been a joint avalanche forecast for the Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino European region for the first time. Cross-border, multilingual, standardized. A worldwide novelty. In the background, several years were spent working on the perfect implementation. We spoke to the two tireless project supervisors Norbert Lanzanasto and Christoph Mitterer from the Tyrol Avalanche Warning Service about the background to the Euregio Avalanche Report.

At first glance, snow profiles seem complicated. However, if you know a few basic terms, this impression is quickly put into perspective. But even if you can read profiles, it takes some practice to draw the relevant conclusions from them. The most important thing, however, is to be able to visualize the snow cover and its layering in the terrain. An example:

The Working Group of Austrian Avalanche Warning Services has published its seasonal report for winter 2017/18. As always, the report not only contains statistical evaluations of the past avalanche winter, but also many detailed and impressively illustrated analyses of specific accidental avalanches. In addition to the LWDs of the Austrian federal states, the SLF and the LWD South Tyrol are also represented with guest contributions. New this year: print version available from the Alpine Club store.

372 written papers were submitted to the International Snow Science Workshop in Innsbruck last October. The Schneestöberer has distilled the most interesting 10% of them for the particularly ambitious readers and collected them with a direct link to the respective paper.

As a winter sports enthusiast, you can hardly avoid the numerous reports on the hotly debated topic of the Tyrolean cable car and ski area program (TSSP) and its new edition in German-speaking countries. Here are a few thoughts from a divided heart to encourage self-reflection and reflection.

Günter Schmudlach is the inventor, founder and programmer of the Swiss online portal Skitourenguru.ch. The avalanche report assesses the risk of countless ski touring routes in Switzerland and soon in the entire Alpine region on a daily basis. A highly innovative project, in our opinion. We spoke to Günter about Skitourenguru in general, his motivation and his vision for the future.