Snow report Stubai Valley, 07/12/2020

Snow condition

On the way to the Pfaffenjoch you can only ski up above the steep step on the glacier, i.e. at approx. 2950m. At the top of the glacier there is good snow cover, crevasses on the normal route to Zuckerhütl are still well covered in snow, Zuckerhütl north face and Pfaffenschneid north face are still well covered in snow, the ice hump in the Zuckerhütl north face has melted quite a bit, but is still there. If you fancy some bare ice :)On the descent on the Fernauferner you can still get down to about 2750m, if you follow the piste you might even get a little lower.

Snow quality

The cold front the day before brought some nice powdery fresh snow, snow line at around 2800m. The amounts were limited, but the higher you got, the more it snowed. At 2800m it was a cosmetic 2cm, at 3500m it must have been 10-15cm. We had doubts as to whether it would be too late to use the cable car and whether everything would be swampy by the time we left. However, thanks to the fresh snow the day before, it stayed good all day, and on the descent in the Zuckerhütl north face at the edge of lookers right, the snow was still powdery even at 12:30, and with a good choice of line you could even avoid getting through onto the hard crust. On the glacier, the fresh snow was already wet, but not too slippery, and thanks to the compact snowpack underneath, it wasn't swampy either. The last descent in a gully from the more exposed Pfaffengrat down to the Fernauferner was also covered in fresh snow on a hard crust and was generally quite nice to ski. Below about 3000m, however, there is only summer snow with deep ruts in it. The enjoyment of the descent is limited there, but better a bad run than a good one :)

As the snow cover under the fresh snow didn't soften all day, the daily increase in avalanche danger was fairly limited. crevasses are still well snowed in, but with the warming the snow bridges are slowly thinning. On the Zuckerhütl normal route, all climbers were roped up, which is also recommended; the main danger at the moment is the risk of falling crevasses and falling rocks.

Overall impression

We had actually only planned a short end-of-season tour on the Stubai Glacier, as you get up rather late with lift support for the time of year and it's no longer possible to do a longer tour. Thanks to the fresh snow from the day before, the not-too-warm temperatures and the north-west orientation of the Pfaffenschneid north face, we spontaneously changed the tour destination. So we were able to climb a beautiful but rather short wall in the Trittfirn, do some steep face climbing and then climb the rocky Pfaffengrat to get to the final line, which took us back to the Fernauferner in the direction of Dresdner Hütte.
A successful end to the season with an incredibly good ratio of descent to route for the time of year :)