Lawinenkunde

Reading material for preparing for the season: The presentations from the Avalanche Symposium of Naturefriends and ZAMG are now available to read in the published conference proceedings.

The sporty winter is far from over and is picking up speed again these days. The snow flurries are now moving to higher altitudes with steeper slopes on average and are hoping for a few more turns of fluffy powder, followed by sizzling firn and summer firn, before surviving the summer in a snow profile hole on the highest glaciers in the Western Alps in heat torpor. So it's time to sum up:

Every year at the end of the season, PowderGuide invites all authors, ConditionsReporters, testers, snowstormers, PowderAlerters - in other words, the large PG community - for a weekend in the mountains as a thank you. It's not just about socializing, but also about sharing and discussing, as well as reviewing the season with all topics related to freeriding and ski touring - and of course being out in the snow. On Saturday, it is a tradition to offer one or more workshops - this winter, PowderGuide was able to win over snow rummager Lukas Ruetz, Lorenzo Rieg and Fabiano Monti and Walter Steinkogler from ALPsolut. This time they were invited to the very cozy Stuibenhütte, beautifully situated below the Alpspitze.

Moisture penetration and nocturnal radiation now become the primary avalanche-forming factor. What about temperature reserve, original layer sequence, humidity and isothermality?

The tiresome issue of human error with the old snow problem remains - just like human error with the danger levels.

In an existing ascent track or on tracked slopes, the avalanche danger can be greater than on the same slope in untracked condition. What sounds absurd at first is easy to understand on closer inspection.

There is now a wealth of popular scientific works on the internet that are relatively easy to understand. Finding these is usually the greater challenge. A collection that can be expanded at will:

For a change, we immerse ourselves in theoretical thought processes relating to people, the psyche and snow. A fundamental assumption: the distinction between experience and knowledge.

It is early winter 2017 and the Eastern Alps are once again experiencing a pronounced old snow problem in some areas. You can't put enough energy into preventing old snow problems, as avalanche accidents show. So we are taking prophylactic measures.

Some people may ask themselves: "Why wasn't it dangerous before the change in the weather in terms of the old snow problem? The weak layers were already pronounced before." The answer lies in the tension.

On Sunday in the week before the camp in Sölden, I receive an email from Dani from risk'n'fun asking if I am spontaneous? The winner of today's competition had had to cancel at short notice and I was in second place. Oops - that's really spontaneous, but of course I'm in. I frantically start to gather my ski equipment. The winter season hasn't really started yet and I'm still sitting on my bike more than I know where my gloves, ski helmet and goggles are. And do the skis still need waxing?

Have you ever helplessly scraped ice out from under the spring bar on the toe piece of a Tech binding? Do other bindings make hairpin turns look much easier? No idea what the difference between brittle and non-brittle drift snow, which may be vital for survival, actually means? SnowFlurry helps.