Snow report Salzburger Land North, 02/09/2017

Snow condition

Another two stars if you stay on the north side. You can also ski down into the valley, but it's better to start a little higher up. The high altitudes are still partly acceptable on the snow side, but really bad on the sunny side, and due to the strong settlement you can still get through relatively well without ground contact even at lower altitudes.

Snow quality

Very mixed, at the bottom about 5-10cm of powder on a very hard snow cover, the best zone is in the forest, shaded and windless between 1300 and 1600m. There is about 20 cm of well-set powder and the layer of old snow is hardly disturbing. Above that, the wind is sometimes very strong, with slab powder, rough top and soft fresh snow alternating. The expos don't matter.

I was only up to 1900m, which is relatively low. The strong winds have transported it, but at the same time pressed it and the sun has baked it. At higher altitudes, however, it could be more critical with the wind, and at lower altitudes it's very compact.

Overall impression

Not really bad (a few nice powder turns, nothing going on on my route, sunshine), but not really good either (worse snow than expected, extremely penetrating S-SW wind), you can certainly still catch something good tomorrow, but it will be difficult to get the right exposure. Sometimes it was better on the sunny side, then again on the shady side. The winds must have been blowing from other directions yesterday (or before).