backcountry journal
Kuhtai Powder (Tirol, Austria)
early March 07
What a great weekend. At last some snow here, 50cm of fresh with almost 100cm higher up. It looks like winter. We returned to the same place as last weekend.
Getting there: A3 Autobahn, 8pm Friday night - the dog and I set our new personal land speed record in a standard Toyota family station wagon, 6 speed, diesel. 240kph.
Saturday
Usual story: I drove down Friday night, slept in the car and met Graham at the trail head at 8am. Avalanche risk and really bad weather ruled out a proper tour so we spent the first 2 hours doing multiple burial search practice then hit a small slope several time. It was fun however the snow was very heavy and wet. Not powder at all. After a very wet stormy day of heavy snow we went down to Oetz and had dinner, where we decided to hit it again the next day. Graham went back to Innsbruck to get Bill and I slept in the car at 2000m.
Getting there: A3 Autobahn, 8pm Friday night - the dog and I set our new personal land speed record in a standard Toyota family station wagon, 6 speed, diesel. 240kph.
Saturday
Usual story: I drove down Friday night, slept in the car and met Graham at the trail head at 8am. Avalanche risk and really bad weather ruled out a proper tour so we spent the first 2 hours doing multiple burial search practice then hit a small slope several time. It was fun however the snow was very heavy and wet. Not powder at all. After a very wet stormy day of heavy snow we went down to Oetz and had dinner, where we decided to hit it again the next day. Graham went back to Innsbruck to get Bill and I slept in the car at 2000m.
Graham enjoys powder turns more than anything. Sunday was great.
Me on Sunday morning.
Sunday
Overnight another 20-30cm fell, including some gentle wind accumulation, plus the previously wet snow had dried somewhat. We were greeted with over knee deep powder on top of a thick layer of fresh heavy snow. Well, you could gently press a weak snowball out of it so it wasn't really powder but relative to this season... it was powder!
We continued to pillage the same small slope that we had explored on Saturday. Shamefully, we did laps, not a summit tour. I have never done back country laps before and it felt strange. The feature we were riding has a good open area as well as some perfect widely spaced trees full of pillows and rolls. It was mostly gentle terrain. I had a 700km drive ahead of me in the afternoon so we started a little earlier and finished by 12.30. In that short time we managed to lap this little terrain feature 6 times, giving us about 1000m of cumulative vertical (powder) before lunch. The runs were too fast and short, but given the avalanche and time constraints it met our objectives very well.
Overnight another 20-30cm fell, including some gentle wind accumulation, plus the previously wet snow had dried somewhat. We were greeted with over knee deep powder on top of a thick layer of fresh heavy snow. Well, you could gently press a weak snowball out of it so it wasn't really powder but relative to this season... it was powder!
We continued to pillage the same small slope that we had explored on Saturday. Shamefully, we did laps, not a summit tour. I have never done back country laps before and it felt strange. The feature we were riding has a good open area as well as some perfect widely spaced trees full of pillows and rolls. It was mostly gentle terrain. I had a 700km drive ahead of me in the afternoon so we started a little earlier and finished by 12.30. In that short time we managed to lap this little terrain feature 6 times, giving us about 1000m of cumulative vertical (powder) before lunch. The runs were too fast and short, but given the avalanche and time constraints it met our objectives very well.
My incredibly enjoyable 167 Dupraz D1
This was Bill's second day riding since his huge smash last season. Considering the damage, it is a very big deal for him to be back in it.
He tests his reconstructed pelvis with a nice big crash
It didn't break.
Bill has some big bits of metal screwed to his bones. You can also see the staples closing the huge lower abdominal incision they had to make to fix the breaks. He still can't do a sit up (but he can tour back country powder)
Poor Bill. He missed all of last season (an epic one). He seems happy to be back.
Me, attempting to chew a very cold energy bar. Those things use more jaw muscle energy than they provide. We are planning an tour of the pointy peak in the background.
You can see a reasonable sized single point avalanche running the full length of a couloir next to the one we that we rode last Saturday.
I was supposed to be going to Chamonix on Thursday night for 4 days. They have had loads of new snow, but also a wildly fluctuating rain-snow level and gale force winds. Pretty much anything steep is out of the question due to avalanche risk. Living this season so far away I never get the chance to continue experiencing the special things that only Chamonix offers. It annoys me just thinking about how much I could be progressing rather than sitting in some office 900km from where I should be. I cancelled the trip. Austria this weekend once again