Snow report Sulden, Ortler, 03/28/2015

Snow condition

Generally speaking, there is little snow at these altitudes at this time of year. The ascent on the road from the valley village (2100m) to the Pizzini hut (2700m) is just about possible without any major carrying passages. However, the southern slopes are already snowed out up to 2300m. Further up it looks quite good, from the hut all tours are possible and the glaciers are well covered in snow. However, the snowfall announced for this week will do the area some good.

Snow quality

We were mainly in the south and east of the Alps, where we mainly found settled snow with a more or less strong windswept cover. Despite 12 hours of sunshine on Saturday, the warming wasn't strong enough to cause the snow to turn into varnish.

The LLB reported level 2, and some loose snow slides could be observed on very steep south-facing slopes, although these could have been a few days old. At least on Saturday, the daytime warming above around 3000m was not yet a significant problem. The focus should rather be on drift snow caused by the strong wind, especially in view of the snowfall forecast for today and tomorrow in combination with a lot of wind.

Overall impression

Subjectively, Saturday in particular was an absolutely fantastic day, a great tour in perfect weather on the Königsspitze, on Sunday the weather was still very good. For the conditions, however, there are only three stars, especially for the steep eastern flank of the Königsspitze, slightly better (i.e. less hard) snow conditions would have been desirable.