Snow report Tannheimer Valley, 01/11/2020

Snow condition

The forest road at Visalpsee heading south at 1100m is full of snow. Stones and soil do not come out here yet. The Visalpsee is also completely frozen over. It's up to you to decide whether you want to skate. You can do a few nice turns on skis :) The snow line was at around 1300 m overnight. From 1600 m, the fresh snow increases rapidly from 1 cm to 10-15 cm. At 2000 m, there are places where a little over 15 cm has fallen, in places it must be more, because old tracks and hard bumps are all covered. Stones only come through in the steep section, otherwise a carefree descent to the parking lot is possible. Of course it's not dream conditions in all other exposures but here in the protected ascent it was acceptable. South side below 1600 aper. Here even up to almost 2000m ridges and ridges are partly snow-free or only a little cosmetically sugared.

Snow quality

It was pretty good today on all the north-facing slopes with a healthy base. Without a handbrake you could ski dusty here. It was about 10-15 cm of powder on the northeast slope, in places it was only 5 if there was an old avalanche track underneath as well as above the gliding snow mouths. It only became quite hard and crusty again from around 1400m. However, the melt crust is wearing, which makes it more pleasant to ski.

Due to the sliding snow avalanches, our ascent was somewhat unfavorable for a short time. It would have been better to ascend the Geierköpfle via the flat side and thus only be just below the possible sliding snow avalanches. But at least this way we got a feel for the snow and found the best descent line. The snow quickly became heavy in the sun, and I think that snow slabs in very steep terrain are definitely possible. There was no drifting snow, but the bond to the hard base layer is quite inhomogeneous in the steep area, at some hairpin bends the snow slid away on the hard layer - this situation was limited to the last steep summit meters

Overall impression

Better than expected. I had feared grotesque conditions when I arrived in the rain yesterday. I didn't realize that it would snow a bit more abundantly. We set off in search of old powder and were rewarded with fresh snow with a good base in the north and north-east sectors. Definitely worth going out again, around the Visalpsee and especially around the Lansberger Hütte there are still lots of powder turns to be made