Sesto Dolomites on 18.04.2022 | Sumedum

Snow condition

Cristallo-Scharte starts from the narrowing of the stream bed, about 20 minutes carry. But it's also very thin there, the route soon gets longer. On Saturday, the snow is also very wet in the afternoon, so there were one or two rock contacts. On Sunday we actually wanted to go to the Sentinella-Scharte, but there's no snow at the bottom of about 2-300m in a mountain pine slope that is probably very difficult to walk on. We then followed the snow towards Hochbrunnerschneid and up to Giralba-Joch. The creek bed at the bottom is just fine, from about 2000 meters there is really enough snow. I've never been to the region before, so I have no comparison with other years.

Snow quality

Saturday at the Cristallo-Scharte it was snowing below the upper 200m, but it hadn't frozen properly at night and so it got really deep right away. It was more like surfing. Below the crux, as described above, it was very deep, sometimes we caved in up to our knees. On Sunday it was much better and colder. The south-east slopes on the Giralba-Joch were perfect at 11:45. The northern slopes only became really soft below 2000 meters. However, the hard snow cover was even and really OK to ski. Below 2000 meters it was pleasantly firny to get through the stone labyrinth. Very pleasant snow for the passages on foot / with crampons.

Stable spring situation. Of course, it's important to be down again reasonably early.

Overall impression

We'll be back! The scenery is absolutely amazing and the skiing is really ok for the time of year. Unfortunately, the carrying routes will probably get longer soon, so in my opinion it won't be worth it for much longer this winter.