The Alpine South
I'm originally from Merano in South Tyrol. I first skied there with my ski instructor Franz when I was five years old. At 14, I owned a neon-colored Nidecker Lipstick snowboard and won my first Italian Cup in giant slalom in a silver catsuit. Later, I worked with the local snowboard school. But then the winters in my home country became more and more unreliable and the question of whether there was enough snow became more and more of a lottery. While we still found it fun to jump out of the lifts and cabins, ride through the woods and jump over barns in our secondary school days, in the last five to ten years you could mostly only concentrate on elegant turns on the slopes. Climate change has never been more evident in South Tyrol than in recent years: The Schnalstal Glacier, formerly a summer training area for various national teams, ceased operations for the first time in May. A bleak future is predicted for many ski resorts in South Tyrol, most of which do not reach more than 2,000 m above sea level.
Regular mid-season lows
However, everything is different in winter 2014! This year, my mother is right, and there's no need to explain that to PowderGuide readers. Who knows why? But this time, the lily of the valley is picked in March in North Tyrol and people are powder skiing in South Tyrol. Since 1951, there has never been such heavy snowfall in northern Italy as this winter: South Tyrol, Trentino and the Piedmont region became this winter's dream destinations as a result. In just a few weeks, ski resorts that were known more as family destinations in recent years became absolute hotspots: the smallest villages such as San Martino di Castrozza, Aprica, the Dolomites and the valleys around the Ortler region and the Meranerland have become famous not only for spectacular avalanche videos (and the typical Passiria Valley dialect), but above all for their belly-deep powder snow.
