Snow report Tannheimer Valley, 02/16/2018

Snow condition

The amount of snow in the northern Tannheim mountains is considerable. Some of it can be started from the valley. But in the forest and on the sunny side, the amount of snow at low altitudes is already low. Due to the warm days on Thursday and Friday and the rain, the fresh snow from the beginning of the week has already been decimated. During the snowfall from Friday to today, around 2 centimeters fell in the middle layers of the northern Tannheim mountains. Today we found an inversion weather situation with high fog. In the valley it was around 0 degrees while at around 1700m above sea level it was well above zero (+5 degrees).

Snow quality

The warmth and the rain (see photo) have worsened the snow quality. At medium altitudes, the snow cover was very wet in places. However, the degree of soaking varied. In addition to the slushy snow, other types of snow encountered were crushed harsch and wet powder on top of harsch. Nevertheless, it was still nice to ski.

The relatively large amounts of fresh snow and the subsequent soaking have taken their toll on the snow cover. In addition to sliding snow slides, old wet snow slides and isolated wet loose snow avalanche cones (also size 2, see photo) could be seen. The majority of the steeper slopes at summit level have discharged over the last two days. Some of the ski tracks were even washed over. We also broke off our tour 100m below the summit. It was too warm and visibility was poor to locate drift snow. I assessed the conditions today as rather critical.

Overall impression

We had a nice day, were on the move and once again explored a new area. We were also lucky that the clouds disappeared above 1500 m above sea level.