Snow report Arlberg, 01/05/2016

Snow condition

Still below average for me and up to 2400m you still have to watch out for the stones. Slowly all the skis have a few holes in them again. You can ski down to about 1600m, I wouldn't ski any lower. It's only really good up to around 1800m. Anything below that is more of a bonus and depends on exposure and other external influences.

Snow quality

Much worse than the last few days. A lot has settled in the meantime and the wind has worked. This is no longer a really fluffy 4* imho. I would award a decent 3* for this. It's fun but no longer very easy.

Still a critical issue for me. Today the motto was "stay relaxed". Even though it's starting to get interesting to tackle a few longer descents, I personally held back a lot. in the last CR on Sunday, I wrote that there were some very disruptive snow build-ups around the 2000m altitude. Yesterday there was probably a partial burial in exactly this section and half of the slope was cleared over several hundred meters with many cracks, and in some places you can see just as many signs that the snow has not yet completely settled and stabilized. Extreme caution is required!

Overall impression

Great day and nice tour today. The season is slowly starting and the bad December days are being forgotten more and more.