Snow report Zillertal Alps South, 12/08/2014

Snow condition

It had snowed a little in the area the weekend before, but there wasn't much of that snow left... we started at an altitude of around 1900m. Depending on the slope exposure, you have to carry your skis for 200-300m. From an altitude of 2200 m we had no problems either on the ascent or on the descent. There is often only 10-20 cm of snow on the rocks and meadows, but it is sometimes so hard that it doesn't even break when you're on foot.

Snow quality

We had a bit of everything on this tour... from 2200m to about 2700m the snow was pretty compact and didn't break up... Between 2700m and 3100m we had to contend with some breakage and from 3100m to 3400m we even had a few nice powder slopes.

At the start of the tour, we had to contend with very strong winds, and we could really see how the wind was building up. The long journey persuaded us to continue, which was rewarded around 11:00 a.m. when the wind slowly died down and the sky cleared. On the South Tyrolean side, a level 2 was issued. I wouldn't have objected to that... We also noticed that wind slabs tended to form at an altitude of 2700-3100m, above that and in the terrain close to the ridge we couldn't see any signs of wind and had some wonderful powder.

Overall impression

Beautiful tour in the southern Zillertal Alps, we were rewarded for continuing in quite strong winds and the sky opened up as the weather forecast said. A few beautiful powder slopes made up for the carrying passages, but it could start to snow ;)