Snow report Paznaun Valley, 01/17/2016

Snow condition

85cm at the top, 30cm in the valley. We had about 20 centimeters of fresh snow today, a bit more in the gullies and hollows, and the valley run is open, but it's not worth skiing all the way down to the valley for freeriding. There is still too little snow in the forest, but in the upper part of the ski area you can already ski many variants.

Snow quality

Mostly nice fluffy fresh snow, with wind cover in some places. Even in the afternoon, most of the snow was still very powdery.

Above the tree line, there were some signs of wind in the snow cover. Around the ski area you could see a few large avalanche edges and avalanche cones that had come down in very steep, rocky terrain. I don't know whether they were blown up or self-triggered, but in the ski area itself I didn't see any avalanches triggered by winter sports enthusiasts apart from a small slab of snow. Nevertheless, I had to be very careful on steep terrain today!

Overall impression

Bright sunshine plus fresh snow made today really fun. Compared to other ski resorts, the crowds in Kappl weren't that big either, so we were able to make beautiful turns in the deep snow from morning to afternoon.