Snow report Zugspitz Arena, 01/04/2018

Snow condition

Not as bad as we thought. Compared to Garmisch or the Ammergau Alps, it snowed in Ehrwald today. There was about 1.40m of snow in the forest at around 1800m.

Snow quality

The snow quality was very different, in the valley quite heavy snow, which became even wetter during the day as the temperatures rose towards midday. In the forest you can still find some very fluffy snow, here you can't really feel that it has been very warm the last few days. In places where the wind has been raging over the last few days, you can find a fairly settled blanket of snow.

According to the LLB warning level 3 to 4, we deliberately did not stay above the tree line or above 2000m today. Due to the heavy fresh snow, the drift snow packs are barely visible. In the forest, the snow cover initially made a fairly stable impression, but then some weak spots became apparent when we created a snow profile. As is so often the case, there was a layer of snow on the ground that had been transformed to build up the layers above it. However, these weak layers could only be disturbed with heavy loads. At the moment you should definitely be careful, as it started to rain in the valley around midday and it was also getting warmer on the mountain above, so the snow was likely to be quite heavy.

Overall impression

We actually wanted to go on a short exercise tour in the Ammergau mountains, but as it was already raining cats and dogs there in the morning, we drove to Ehrwald. As an emergency plan, today was definitely not the worst day