Snow report Salzburger Land North, 02/17/2017

Snow condition

Just about 2 stars. The valley descents are just about possible on the forest roads, below 1200m you don't have much to look for in the forest. From then on there is about 5 cm of fresh snow, above that up to the tree line it's ok, up to about 15 cm of fresh snow has fallen. The base is quite stable due to the compact layer of old snow, but very poor above the tree line, lots of blowing snow, mountain pines and rocks everywhere.

Snow quality

Quite good. The fresh snow is very sticky at the bottom (skins grow!) and slow. From about 1400m onwards, it gets much better and the quality is really fine towards the top. Unfortunately, you can feel the old hard tracks and the hardpack everywhere, but there are a few cool turns to be had.

Not much on our forest tour. The old snow layer is very compact and the moist fresh snow in the lower layers has bonded well with it, up to the tree line it all seems quite stable, there were no drifts to be seen, I can only speculate about that, but everything seemed very blown and the LLB is also quite clear there.

Overall impression

Cool day, first tracks on the very popular descent, which doesn't happen that often. Tomorrow you have to weigh things up: Above the tree line (if the wind calms down) the better old snow (compact powder), which then doesn't interfere with the new snow, but certainly tricky conditions with the loads or lots of sharks...