Snow report Ammer Mountains, 12/28/2017

Snow condition

After spending the last three days ski touring in the Ammergau mountains in varying conditions, I'd like to briefly describe the situation here: before today's snowfall, the snowfall was decent and most of the non-south-facing ski tours in the area were possible. In most cases, it was also possible to start from the valley. Some tours that run through the forest were not yet advisable, but the snowfall on December 27 and today (December 28) had a positive effect. In the valleys there was about 20 cm and on the mountain up to 40 cm. This is certainly a good basis for the weekend. However, the fresh snow was blown away by the wind.

Snow quality

Before the snowfall, the snow quality was poor. Above 1700m or 1800m you could still find powder-like snow. Otherwise, it was a mixture of slush, melted snow, rain crust and wind-pressed snow. However, there was no great fun on the slopes. Yesterday, Wednesday, it thawed on the shaded side up to 1600 m above sea level and the snow quality was very good after the snowfall. However, the snow fell with a lot of wind. This morning the amount of snow (up to approx. 1300 m above sea level) was not enough to cover the old frozen tracks. However, the problem of the old tracks should have changed during the course of the day due to the fresh snow. Above 1300m, however, the snow was brilliant. There was a lightly settled powder snow.

The situation must be assessed with caution. The large amount of fresh snow fell under the influence of strong winds and some of the fresh snow is lying on icy surfaces (rain crust last Friday). In combination with the warming at the weekend, the increase in fresh snow is likely to lead to wet snow slides and sliding snow avalanches again.

Overall impression

The photos show that, for example on Tuesday, the weather was right, but not the snow. Today it was the other way around.