Snow report Ammer Mountains, 01/13/2019

Snow condition

After spending the last four days ski touring in the Ammergau mountains in a wide variety of conditions, I'd like to briefly describe the situation here: a lot of snow fell in the Ammergau mountains last week. Even in the valleys there was about ¾ meter of snow by Sunday. Correspondingly more on the mountains. The rain since Sunday morning has reduced the snow cover in the valley. However, it snowed all day on Sunday from 1100m upwards. In addition to the high avalanche risk, another limiting factor was that there was "too much" snow. In order to be able to ski down really sensibly, the slopes had to have a certain gradient (~at least 30 degrees) or have already been groomed, otherwise people would simply get stuck. Untracked tours were only possible with great difficulty, as this meant making tracks in deep snow of 1 meter or more (see photo). Most of the ski tours around Ober- and Unterammergau were completed, including Graßhügel, which usually have too little snow (e.g. Aufacker). In the Graswang valley, for example, the Scheinberg was already skied at the weekend.

Snow quality

On Thursday and Friday we were still skiing in fine bottomless powder in the Ammertal; on Saturday in the Graswangtal in hard-packed powder with a melting hard cap; Sunday again in fine powder and slush (below 1100).

The situation is critical. A lot of fresh snow fell under the influence of strong winds. I saw a few spontaneous slab avalanches. In combination with the warming and the rain on Sunday, wet snow slides and sliding snow avalanches are an issue. We were actually always cautious on the way and avoided exposed areas and twice aborted our tour prematurely.

Overall impression

These were crazy days. We agreed for the first time that there was too much snow on a tour when we skied back down the ascent track because people couldn't ski next to it.

Planning a sensible tour is very difficult right now.