PowderGuide

The proven splitboard testival Climb the Mountain goes into the next round. From 27-29 January 2017, test equipment for splitboarders will be available at the Berggasthof Piz Buin at the Silvretta reservoir on the Bielerhöhe. There will also be a lecture program, a film screening with Aline Bock and guided tours in the Silvretta on request.

Once again this year, there is the opportunity to win a trip with PG partner Julbo. Last time, Phillip Crivelli was out and about in the Western Alps with steep face pros Sam Anthamatten and Vivian Bruchez. This time, an experienced skier or boarder will be heading to Icelandic volcanoes with Manuela Mandl and Flo Orley.

As of today, SNOWGRID maps from ZAMG for Austria and some neighboring parts of the Eastern Alps are available on PowderGuide. SNOWGRID is a high-resolution snowpack model that shows the spatial distribution of the snowpack in the terrain very well. We now have the current snow depth and the change in snow depth over the last 24 hours as a separate sub-category in the Weather/Snow section and are pleased to be able to offer this service together with ZAMG.

Although there is still not much to see of winter 16/17 (at least in the northern Alps), 2016 is already fast approaching its end. First of all, however, we still have Christmas to celebrate and probably some presents to collect, but also to hand out! Once again this year, we asked the members of the PowderGuide editorial team about their Christmas wishes and present the answers here - maybe someone still needs some inspiration.

The leaflet "Attention Avalanche" is a foldable flyer to take away, which is used during training and can be consulted as a reminder and mental aid in the terrain and when planning tours. The leaflet has been revised and reissued. You can download it free of charge here (print, fold, insert...).

The Austrian Alpine Club combines the various facets of its training program under the umbrella term "Safe on the Mountain" (SAB). In addition to the SAB courses on various mountain sports disciplines for section members, there are the so-called SAB booklets, in which the relevant teaching content can be found. In addition to the already well-known booklets on ski touring, via ferrata, sport climbing and mountain biking, there is now Hochtouren - Sicher unterwegs im vergletscherten Hochgebirge.

The ambitious, always admirably aesthetic film series A Skier's Journey by Jordan Manley and his riders Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots returns to British Columbia, the home of the three, for its conclusion. The half-hour film shows how they traverse the Coast Mountains, including the great Homathko Icefield, in three weeks by boat, foot, skis and packrafts.

The amount of fresh snow (in clever terms "24-hour snowfall") is omnipresent in winter: ski resorts use it to attract visitors, it is always too low for real ski bums, the municipal snow clearing service hates it and we even have our own oracle to predict it. Of course, in times after the Reformation, you can't believe everything, you have to be allowed to question!

What has been going on at PowderGuide.com over the summer? Do the PGers do anything at all in the summer? What happened to the user survey from last spring? Questions upon questions that we now want to answer!

In a recently published study by the University of Neuchâtel and the SLF (WSL), snow depth data from 11 weather stations in the Swiss Alps were examined. The stations are located in an altitude range between 1139 and 2450 m and the time series go back to 1970. The duration of snow cover has decreased at all 11 stations, whereby the earlier melting of the snow cover in spring is reflected in the statistics.

Freeride pros Eva Walkner, Aline Bock and Jackie Paaso are launching an avalanche safety project for women together with ski guide Geli Kaufmann. The SAFE AS courses, which have been successfully training women in the USA since 2012, serve as a model. The first SAFE ON SNOW dates will take place in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the fall.

Live soundtrack to the movie - while specially composed soundtracks are no longer a rarity these days, the guys from Troublehaus want to go one better and have the band play their movie "Riding Rhythms" live to the movie.