Snow report Salzkammergut mountains, 01/28/2017

Snow condition

The snow conditions are really good for touring. Down in the forest, everything is easy to ski without stones or roots. It's also great at the top. The snow depth varies greatly. on average there is about 110 - 130cm of settled snow. A few places are a little blown off, but can easily be skied around. in blown-in areas (also far from the crest) there are sometimes even large areas of up to 2 meters of snow. So much for that, you won't find any stones for a while yet

Snow quality

The snow quality also varies greatly, but tends to be on the poor side. In the forest you can still find short, easy to ski pieces of powder. On the north and east sides there is mostly a windsnow cover, sometimes stable, but often not. pretty horrible for skiing. In the morning (10:00 a.m.) on the sunny side, you'll find some easy-going firn, although in the steeper terrain there are quite a lot of nodules and sliding snow spoiling the fun. By 11:30 at the latest, however, it was so deep on the south side that it was no longer worthwhile.

On the whole, quite relaxed. The standard tours are down anyway, so not much will happen. On the south side, the steep terrain is definitely something to watch out for. Lots of sliding snow and also some ground avalanches that were quite impressive. And you never know when one of these things will come along. 20-30 cm below the surface is a layer of rime, on top of which is quite compact drift snow. However, the whole thing can only be triggered with really great force and the breakage doesn't really propagate itself, but underneath the snow cover is very compact and there are actually no weak layers to be seen

Overall impression

Top weather for beautiful summits and panoramic tours. For downhill fun, we are once again eagerly awaiting fresh snow...