Snow report Tannheimer Valley, 03/23/2021

Snow condition

In principle very easy. Only at the top of the ridge there are many rock contacts, as it is only slightly snow-covered.

Snow quality

About 20 cm of powder snow on a relatively hard surface. It was very good to ski but not as good as at the weekend for a long time. A little bit choppy at the top, you had to ski a bit actively to avoid drilling a ski into the snow at high speeds. Further down it was better, then slightly damp but still easy to ski. Everything that wasn't purely north-facing was slightly damp or already had a cap. However, we only left at 13:30.

Safer than we thought - in our rough planning, we assumed that we would skip the north-facing summit slope, which is up to 40 degrees steep, today. On the spot, however, we saw that the thickness of the fresh snow pack was quite even and the layer underneath was hard. The Bavarian LLB (2/2, no drifting snow in exposures N and NW) was therefore more suitable for today's tour than the Tyrolean one (3/2, drifting snow problem in all exposures). There was already good movement on steep sunny slopes during our ascent. The east-facing part of the basin also has significantly more visible drift snow packs than the northern part.

Overall impression

Powder only in the purely northern exposures for now, but I think that should quickly lead to usable firn in other exposures :-) Due to the fantastic weather and the unexpected relatively alpine tour, I give it 4 stars today despite the not quite perfect snow.