Piemont

The Col de Larche, which is almost 2000 m high, offers a variety of different ski tours in the Italian-French border region between the Hautes Alpes (France) and the Italian Southern Alps.

I'd like to welcome everyone to the 5th matchday of the Südstaubundesliga and hope you're looking forward to exciting matches with the Saturday powder as much as I am. Because just in time for the weekend, as with the Bundesliga, the Südstau is starting again and alarming amounts are coming from southwestern Piedmont via Monte Rosa and Ticino to Adamello and the French southwest. This time the models don't show anything further east and there are probably no positive surprises in terms of the track (after the poor Dolomites were very disappointed last week), because it's the same areas as always in the south that are getting snow this winter.

Amazing Snowfalls in the Piemonte in Italy, with about 1,5 -2 meters of "Freshies" within only 4 days (!) made the competition, just about 12 hrs after the last snowflakes came down, with stunning blue skys absolutely "perfecto"!!! The Artesina Freeride Festival 2015 went down on Sunday, February 8th and it was a blast for our rider-reporter Nico Göz. Nico decided to write the report in English so that the organizers and the other riders could understand a bit of it.

Now that the Northern Alps and the Pyrenees have been raised from two below-average stars to four-star report level in 7 days, our favorite Nordic god is taking on the south of the Alps - and not the classic south of the last Southern Alps, but the more exotic spots that haven't done so well so far.

After it has been rather quiet in the Alarmecke recently with several small snowfalls and steeper things to tackle in the touring terrain, the powder pirates are getting excited again, as there is südstau and new opportunities to have some lazy fun in the powder from the lift. Once again. In the north, we can probably kiss the season goodbye when we look at the forecast warmth for next week.

Didn't I say in the last alert that it would stop snowing on Monday? I was just on the Ullrphone and he said: Think again, dear! The new alert is in effect until midweek, as Ullr apparently has a plan to break seven-day snowfall records (it has already literally "pulverized" the 48-hour ones in places with 50- to 100-year events in the southeast). Then it's on to the next alert.

Let's start with the good news: The drought is over. In the medium term, something will come out of the sky again. But why wander far away when good things are so close - at least in terms of time?

Half alarm, but all fun. At least in Piedmont!

The first dump is the sweetest, although hopefully not the deepest, because let's assume that, analogous to "the first cut is the deepest", the first dump will not also be the deepest. But you could say that the first real snowfall of the season is the one that causes the most excitement and anticipation, because it's finally starting properly.

After everyone almost went crazy because of a few colorful cards and hardly any snow fell below 2500-2600m, there will now be a short cabin break on Monday to discuss tactics and then the südstau will go out on the field again on Tuesday with renewed vigor.

The past few days in the northern Alps have been characterized by sunshine and foehn winds. Low pressure system Yvan slowly moved from the Iberian Peninsula to the Mediterranean and provided the southerly flow that brought us gale-force gusts last weekend. Wind speeds of 140 km/h were measured on the Patscherkofel on Saturday (12.3), 115 km/h on the Zugspitze and an impressive 104 km/h in Innsbruck city center (station at the university).

"Monte Rosa" is the name of the largest mountain massif in the Alps. And Monte Rosa also gave its name to the so-called "Freeride Paradise – Monterosa Ski". In order to taste the fruits of paradise, we stayed at the highest possible spot in the Refugio Guglielmina at 2,880 m above sea level. But instead of being banished, we were rewarded with several big dump powder days.