Snow report Tannheimer Valley, 04/08/2021

Snow condition

The slope at the bottom has even been rolled again, so it will go on for a while :-)

Snow quality

Lots of things...currently quite difficult to find the ingredients for good powder (high, north-facing & steep enough due to the angle of the sun) with a reasonable avalanche situation. Our first 100m or so were purely north-facing and quite good. 40cm deep and fluffy, but a bit slow. As soon as you get out of the purely north-facing position or there was more wind, it was immediately pressed / capped and relatively challenging to ski. Interestingly, between 1500 and 1300 meters there is some really nice powder. Below 1300 meters it was difficult to ski thick cover.

Really a lot of wind the last few days: big cornices and large blown-off ridges. Even in the valley at 850 meters it was really windy the last few days. As a result, there were sometimes big differences in the sinking depth when making tracks. Before larger undertakings are possible again, the whole thing should settle much better. I think today was the very first time I haven't seen a track on the Gaishorn ;-)

Overall impression

Beautiful wintry atmosphere with pleasant temperatures in the sun :-) Skiing not quite as rewarding as I had hoped. Finding good powder is getting more and more difficult now, but with the weather forecast it shouldn't take forever to get good firn, I think. The Austrian police are now apparently checking on the mountain themselves to make sure that ski tourers aren't crossing the border illegally...