Snow report Upper Bavaria, 02/15/2020

Snow condition

Below 1000 m, you now have to look for shady forest tracks, below 800 you definitely have to carry. The fresh snow (>1400m) of the last three days has on average just been enough to get caught between all the ice floes that are still exposed. Only gullies and hollows that have been blown in have more snow cover.

Snow quality

Once again, the worst was to be feared on the ascent. Rough crushed ice cover of the worst kind. But it was better on the descent. In the steep summit slope (south-east) it was still a case of jumping around, but then on the south slope the snow started to firn up nicely and further down and in the pines the wind-pressed but still cold fresh snow was nice to ski in places. Very sharky everywhere. At the very bottom (NE) it was frozen through to protect the base.

The main danger comes from slipping on exposed cow pats (...whatever comes to mind on the anerobic border ;). Joking aside. Snow packs are definitely present and quite tempting, because there is a lot of hard snow all around if you don't time it well. In my opinion, the readiness to release depends heavily on the gliding layer, so it's less safe on previously untracked slopes. The warning reports from Bavaria and Tyrol read almost identically this time, but the border to level 2 is located at 2000m for the Austrians, in Bavaria from 1400m.

Overall impression

Really glad to have been out today. Comparatively little activity and easy skiing at a low base level. Last year we only had comparable conditions sometime in May.