Snow report Upper Bavaria, 04/15/2019

Snow condition

On the north and northeast side, it started on open slopes around 1200 - 1300 m with a closed snow cover. There then suddenly, especially in hollows, gullies and hollows still quite thick. Picture 1 shows the south(0st)-facing slope with the normal route to the Geigelstein, so there is still some snow cover above 1500 m on the sunny side. Nevertheless, north-facing slopes at the bottom as well as at the top are absolutely recommended.

Snow quality

Actually not too bad. Soft, slushy snow on mostly very compact, wet but not dripping old snow. On very steep slopes, the top layer tends to slide off. Only rarely slowing down.

It's really impressive how much vegetation has fallen victim to snowfall and avalanches this winter. There are sticks, branches and trees everywhere. That would take several normal winters. Daytime warming was issued and can definitely be confirmed. Increasingly, even purely north-facing slopes are becoming unpleasantly warm and cornice breaks are also occurring, especially because they can also carry a lot of wet loose snow in many places. The gliding snow in the photo (N, 1400 m) is a good 1.50 - 2 m deep.

Overall impression

Although, according to King Franze in Monaco di Bavaria, there's always "a bit of something" left to do, you slowly have to stick to the good old "rien ne va plus" of French ski bohemia and move to higher, shadier, steeper terrain. My renewed skin failure on the summit slope (shitty hybrid glue!) completely ruined it for me. The best part of the tour was the bike section through the Achental fruit tree blossom, even if the snow would have been funky enough for 2 stars.