Snow report Ammer Mountains, 02/09/2017

Snow condition

The amount of snow is of course rather small overall. But you can still start from the valley in places. However, stone contact is very likely. On the sunny side, things are now looking bad and many south-facing slopes are bare. A few centimetres fell during the snowfall at the beginning of the week. In wind-calm areas at around 1800m above sea level, there were still 5-8cm of powder snow on a hard base today.

Snow quality

The snow quality exceeded all expectations. From 1400m above sea level in northern exposure, the finest powder snow can be found. These 5-8cm of powder snow lie on a hard layer of harsh snow and were brilliant to ski. However, this also depends on how deep the ground was before the last snowfall. On the north side, it didn't thaw down to the valley today. As it was otherwise sunny in the mountains, at lower altitudes and in places exposed to the sun, there was hard snow and later slush (if there is still snow).

I couldn't see any major danger signs today. On the surrounding mountains, there were a few wet snow slides from steep, near-ridge and rocky terrain. On my ski tour in the Tannheimer Tal yesterday, however, I observed an avalanche cone of a snow slab that I would not have expected in this terrain (see photo). At approx. 2000m below the Sulzspitze, facing north-west in the lee of a ridge, a relatively large snow slab (size 2; spontaneous or caused by remote triggering) came down. As it didn't look like it was covered with snow, it must have fallen between Tuesday and Thursday. I'd put the problem here as "wind-influenced fresh snow overlying a loose old snow surface".

Overall impression

It may be hard to believe, but there is powder snow in the Ammergau mountains. However, there was more fresh snow in the Tannheimer Tal yesterday.