Snow report Zugspitz Arena, 02/12/2021

Snow condition

The snow conditions could be better. In the valley, the base was already gone, so artificial snow is needed here "as always". The sharks are lurking on the east face, despite around 30 cm of fresh snow.

Snow quality

The extremely dry and cold fresh snow covers critical spots and rocks are difficult to see. My skis have already picked up the odd scuff or two. Most of the fresh snow lies on an icy crust. The flat sections are fantastic to ski. Steeper sections are scratchy.

A loose snow avalanche had probably already come loose from steep rocks yesterday (north-facing), otherwise I wasn't able to observe any avalanche activity. The snow settled today in the sunshine. There was still relatively little snow on the ascent (Ferrata) and in the upper section it was quite blown off.

Overall impression

Sorry up front: I don't have any photos. Due to the cold (down to -18.7°C), I had to avoid taking my gloves off. And when I did unpack my cell phone, it turned off immediately, even though I had it in my inner jacket pocket. The power bank I was carrying with me probably also refused to work due to the cold. The cold was an additional challenge today. The cheese sandwich was frozen hard. The hot tea (in a plastic bottle) was more hard than liquid at lunchtime. Only the thermos bottle did what it was supposed to do. A warm drink right to the end. I had kept a small sip as a last reserve. The cold problem is likely to increase tomorrow as the wind picks up.
The east flank is already pretty rugged. There are still quite a few rocks in the bottleneck. Nice to ride at the bottom. However, everything that got sun today will probably already have a slight crust tomorrow. I had actually planned to descend the north face. The snow at the bottom would have been nice, but most of it was wind-packed and hard. As I've done the descent in these conditions before, I spontaneously decided to do the "normal" descent.