Snow report Salzburger Land North, 12/14/2017

Snow condition

At the start at approx. 850m, even on favorable terrain, you keep getting through. From about 1300-1400m it gets better, but you have to be careful everywhere. The lower tours in particular need a complete reset.

Snow quality

Very different:800-1200: icy tracks covered with a few cm of fresh snow = 2*1200-1500: old snow clearly noticeable, often hard. Much of it already tracked, but still quite nice to ski =3*1500-1800m: Nice, somewhat wind-treated new and drift snow, but still fine and light. You can feel the old snow cover, but it doesn't matter (especially with the thick poles). Really good = 4*

The (Bavarian) situation report clearly warns of dangerous drifting snow, even in the forest down to 1600m. I can confirm that, from about there the massive packs start and the whole thing looks very brittle. Further up, the heaviest drifts. I didn't go much further up and stayed in the flat, relatively dense forest. Despite the relative steepness, there was hardly any danger in the tracks, as everything was completely ploughed up and the snow conditions changed very little overall

Overall impression

Beautiful (pre-)winter day with strong winds from all (!) directions, sometimes changing quickly. I didn't need the wind, but otherwise I liked the atmosphere.
Although there was already a lot of track (from yesterday), there was still something worthwhile to find, most likely in the high larch forest.
But the snow conditions are bad overall (although better than last year at the same time). The deep (and rewarding) forest runs in particular still really need a lot.
I would also be cautious at the top, both in terms of the snow conditions and the avalanche situation. But that doesn't stop people from going to the higher altitudes here...