Snow report Hochplattig west summit, 04/01/2021

Snow condition

Up to 1250m there is no snow on the south side. The snow patches start around 1300m and then a continuous snow cover above that. However, I think this will change quickly and there will be nothing left up to 1350m at the end of the warm phase. It is therefore advisable to approach here on the forest road by bike. The rock bar below the summit flank is also almost completely snowed out and has to be climbed down briefly. On the rest of the tour, the snow conditions are very good and will change, but will not prevent you from riding. However, the summit flank (80m) has very little snow cover and this is where most of the action will be. At the bottom you will have to stay in avalanche paths to get as far down as possible. Forest and mountain pine terrain are no longer skiable below 1500m. Above that, however, the pines are still well covered. Overall, however, there is only an average amount of snow for steep southern flanks above the Inn Valley, not above average.

Snow quality

We left at 10.30 from the summit at 2750m. At that time, the summit flank was perfectly firned up (south). The southwest gully below got sun a little later, also due to the shading by rocks to the south. As a result, the conditions for a firn descent were not good until around 11 am. The summit flank was fantastic to ski, unfortunately there were already some avalanche boulders in the gully, which made it a little rougher to ski, but they were also well softened.

The danger to the skin is the daytime warming. In my opinion, you should have finished your tour with south-facing exposure by 11.30 at the latest and be off the mountain again. Around this time we also heard the first wet snow avalanches from south-east and east-facing rock faces. Otherwise, of course, there is a risk of falling on hard snow in the morning.

Overall impression

The gache Rinne on the Hochplattig west summit is a really long but also incredibly impressive tour (No. 111 in the Freeski Tirol guide by Reini Scherer). A total of 1850 meters of which 500 meters are mostly on the forest road from Obermieming. And the last 900m are again on skis due to the steepness. If you want to do the tour as a day tour, I recommend a mountain bike for the ascent on the forest path. It took us about 5 hours to get from the end of the forest path to the summit due to the partially unsupportive snow cover (when trudging). The reason why the snow cover was not perfectly stable was probably due to the warm temperatures and the fact that the snow cover had not yet been completely transformed. Despite very good night-time radiation and the snow cover freezing through, we were sometimes only able to zig-zag sideways with the crampons as we broke into the snow cover using frontal points. Therefore, my recommendation for the next few days is to stay above 2500m if you want to trudge steep firn flanks. The summit flank offers breathtaking views down into the Inn valley. The tour "should be on the touring program of every ambitious ski mountaineer" as Reini Scherer writes in his book.