Well, it’s been a nearly a year since we were in the Tyrolean Alps skiing our hearts out for two weeks. When we arrived home, we managed to put a couple of reports together from our voyage. But, we got so busy jumping into spring ski season, that these reports got pushed by the wayside. Now that it’s the perfect time of year to be touring from hut to hut in the Alps, we thought we’d finish out documenting our journey.

The day before, we toured from Jamtal to Weisbadener Hutte. We had plans to potentially complete what most people call the Silvretta Tour by staying one more night at the Silvretta Hutte, just over the border in Switzerland. However, we knew that bad weather was on the way, and snow falling could make glacier travel difficult and dangerous, and we could have a challenging exit back to Galtur. So, we decided to jump the gun and skip the last night. But, that didn’t mean that we couldn’t enjoy a tour on the Ochsentaier Glacier before we departed, which beckoned us with it’s twinkly white from the Weisbadender Hutte.

In the morning, the sun shone bright as predicted. But the front was still on the way. We left the bulk of our gear still in the hut as we skinned our way over to the Ochsentaier Gletscher. The terrain near the bottom of the glacier was generally steep and sidehilled, and a little treacherous for the firm skinning conditions we encountered, even though tracks were beaten into the snow. I don’t have pictures from that terrain – because, frankly, I was gripped and didn’t want to fall into the crevasse below me – but here’s a couple from when it started to ease up.

As we climbed higher on the Oschentaier Glacier, it kept getting more and more beautiful – a very airy, other-wordly scene.

I started to enjoy myself.

First looks at the Piz Buin twins, standing at 10,866 ft and 10,679 ft.

The Piz Buin dominated the landscape and the photos don’t do them justice. They are actually relatively large. For perspective, can you see the three backcountry skiers in this photo?

And then, before we knew it, the Tyrolean Alps revealed themselves. Here, I gaze upon one of our descent toward the Weisbadener Hutte the day before.

But we had more skinning to do. We were headed toward a saddle called Egghomlucke, which sat on the border between Austria and Switzerland.

The enticing Sivrettahorne, 10,643 ft.

Our visit on the saddle was quick and dirty as the wind howled over it. We waved to Switzerland for the umpteenth time on our tour and quickly headed back down to warmth and shelter a few hundred feet below. Views of Switzerland.

Frank on the saddle.

Then, it was ski time. Frank.

Conan was not really on the picture program

Me.

The Weisbadener Hutte below.

We gathered our things in the hut, and then down valley we went, heading toward the beautiful Silvertella Stausse (reservoir), where we turned east toward Galtur.

The afternoon was hot, and we marveled at the numerous wet slide avalanches that poured down from the mountains, still relatively far away from our route of travel. We ended our tour at a small town called Wirl, where Conan hopped on a bus and retrieved our car from Ishgl.

While our tour the day before from Jamtal to Weisbadener was more exciting in terms of skiing, I think this tour on the Oschentaier Gletscher was the most scenic. Though it was a wrap for our awesome Silvretta tour, our trip was far from done. Next destination, Saint Anton. We had powder to ski

Here’s a look at our route for the day!

The post TBT: Silvretta Tour Part 3- Weisbadener Hutte & Ochsentaier Glacier (28 Feb 2019) appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

From the Jamtal Hut, we headed south and up the valley, eventually traveling on the Jamtalferner Glacier. Frank and Conan skinning down low in the valley.

And a little further up….

It was hard not to admire hosts of ski lines along the way.

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Me skinning with the vast valley behind.

Frank.

Eventually, we set our sites on one line near the top of the valley on a peak called Gamsspitze (3107 m). So, we began our climb up the couloir. Frank.

After the couloir, the terrain flattened on a large bench that sat beneath the summit.

Since the upper reaches of the summit did not have enough snow to ski, we ditched our packs to finish the climb. Frank nearing the summit, with me behind.

It was…. exposed….

Conan snapped a photo of us on the summit of Gamsspitze.

The views from the summit were stunning.

Toward Switzerland….

Wait, what? Does that go? Not so much…. You’d need some rope….

After admiring the lines that surrounded us, we headed back down to our skis.

Alright, on to the skiing! I dropped in first, on the skiers left couloir, just lookers left of the summit. The snow was variable, but mostly pretty good.

Conan dropped in to the next one over to our right.

Frank cut the middle, between our two lines….

I enjoyed the nice creamy turns in the apron.

After skiing Gamsspitze, we had to decide whether to descend the glacier a bit in order to reascend on the other side, which would allow us to go over a pass called Tiroler Scharte, the traditional way to Weisbadener Hut, which was our destination for the evening. Or we could go via another route involving 3 passes, which may or may not work. We decided for adventure.

We headed up toward our first pass, Jamjoch, admiring the views Gamsspitze along the way. We skied the lines to the lookers left of the summit.

Another glimpse of Switzerland.

Jamjoch was a breeze. But then there was a 2nd unnamed (at least on our map) pass that presented the crux of our route. The snow had been blasted by the wind and was not really skiable. But the incredibly loose rock and slick ice made it difficult to downclimb. Thankfully, Conan had a a bit of rope with him, just long enough for a rappel to reach decent snow. So, we rappelled.

From there, we skied down a bit and skinned up to our third pass, Obere Ochsencharte.

Looking back at our rappel route, the obvious gray low point on the right.

From the pass, we descended the Vermuntgletcher (Glacier) and valley toward Weisbadener Hut.

See the hut in the distance?

Close up of the old hut….

On our third night of our hut tour, we finally arrived early enough to enjoy some beer in the warm sun

And while we enjoyed our drinks, we planned our tour for the next day

Our route for the day!

The post Silvretta Ski Tour Part 2: Jamtal Hut to Weisbadener Hut with Gamsspitze Ski appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

Access to the Heidelberger hut is incredibly easy- you just get to the top of the E5 lift (Piz Val Gronda) at Ischgl and traverse down to the hut (you could also do a long, flat valley skin from Ischgl, but the lift option seems like a lot more fun). That meant we had time to make a few laps at the ski area and check out the scenery:

One curious thing about Ischgl was the “duty free” store in Switzerland. Since a corner of the area is in Switzerland (most of it is in Austria), you can buy some booze and cigarettes duty free, then ski back to the base. So Euro… We skipped that and headed towards the Heidelberger hut:

For the uninitiated, huts in Europe are often more like a hotel, plenty of rooms, great food, and beer, of course. Best of all, that beer is not of the overly-hopped swill that is so popular in the USA, but instead is delicious weiss, dunkelweiss (my favorite), and Helles varieties.

We ended up sharing a room with about 10 others. At all the other huts, we actually had private rooms. With European huts, the gear needs are pretty minimal. Rather than a sleeping bag, you just bring a tiny, lightweight liner, along with your toothbrush and you’re set. They even have slippers to use, although I might consider bringing my own next time. Showers were certainly nice as well. The one thing I didn’t bring that I wish I had- soap. None of the bathrooms at any of the huts had soap. Anyway, after a good night’s sleep, we headed out behind most of the other groups towards the Jamtal hut.

We headed to the pass called Kronenjoch, though it’s not the only route between the Heidelberger and the Jamtal. Either route is a bit less than 3,000′ of elevation gain. Morning light:

Kronenjoch:

View from the pass:

From Kronenjoch, you could ski fairly flat terrain straight to beers on the deck of the Jamtal Hut. Or climb the small neighboring peak, Krone. We were looking for more interesting skiing, however. Meanwhile, the snow wasn’t exactly inspiring. On the one hand, it was stable. But warm temps and wind made almost all of the snow surface less than desireable. Still, as CO skiers, one thing we know is finding good snow even when it hasn’t snowed in a while. We knew we were looking for the “rippled” textured snow- this face looked like it might have some promise:

We headed that way:

We decided to try to turn the corner on the climber’s right of the face- either finding an easy way around the back, or skiing what we came up, or looking for better terrain on the other side. From this mini col, we could see the Jamtal hut, complete with ice climbing towers far below:

We found what looked like good snow below us, plus potentially some other terrain, so we dropped off the other side. Frank:

Brittany skiing the ripple snow towards the hut:

It would have been easy at this point to call it a day and ski to the Jamtal hut and enjoy a dunkelweiss in the sun. Instead, we traversed left

and Brittany found a couloir. So we climbed it. Conan:

Then we skied it. Conan:

Frank:

Brittany:

We skied down to the hut, straight to the little ice climb tower. Our route is hidden on the far right of the rocky peak in the upper right.

We’re newbies, and you can tell because we didn’t make it to the hut in time for beer in the sunshine. But I’m pretty sure we skied better snow than everyone else did that day.

That concludes part one of our Silvretta ski tour. we’ll have another post soon covering our time from the Jamtal Hut to the Weisbadaner Hut, followed by the exit to the town of Galtur. Here is our map from the Heidelberger to the Jamtal:

The post Silvretta Ski Tour Part 1: Ischgl to the Jamtal Hut appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

Garmisch is incredibly scenic and surrounded by intimidating, angry mountains.

It is also home to Zugspitse, Germany’s highest peak at 2962 meters (9718 feet). Of course, half of it lies in Austria….

Conan insisted we try gluhwien – basically hot spiced wine, as opposed to hot spiced cider.

Apparently, they still celebrate Christmas in February in Garmisch

After flying direct from Denver to Munich, we were jet-lagged. So, rather than pushing for a little further destination, we decided to start our first tour (the day after arriving into Germany) close to Garmisch – in the mountains of Tirol just over the Austrian border. We drove to the town of Biberwier and began our tour from Marienberg Ski Area. Our plan was to circumnavigate the massif whose highest peak is Grunstein (2663 m). We took three lifts for a bump in elevation (ski touring tickets are cheap).

At the top, we began our ascending traverse toward the first of three cols – Holltori.

The Alps are just always so beautiful.

From Holltori, we skied down a few hundred vertical feet to the valley below.

As we rounded the corner we saw a lot people. I mean, a lot of people. Keep in mind, this is European “backcountry”. It was a Sunday with great weather…. And we made our way up to our second col, Gunsteinscharte, along with all of our new Euro friends.

The top of the col was a bit of a cluster – with Euros doing all kinds of silly things that I would never consider, like numerous people walking down from the col in ski boots. Conan, Frank, and I decided to ski it….

After Gunsteinscharte, we finally hopped off the Euro train and suddenly we were mostly alone among giants – with some good skiing along the way! Frank.

Me.

Conan.

After a fun ski, we headed upward toward the last col, Beiberwiererscharte. But, we took a little detour for some added scenery and skiing.

Lots of eye candy.

A few turns back toward the last col.

It’s called Beiberwiererscharte because it leads to the town of Beiberwierer, seen below in the photo. “Scharte” is translated as “notch”, meaning a pass or col.

We enjoyed over 3000 vertical feet of skiing back to the valley floor. Conan.

Frank.
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Brittany.

The line just kept on going and going….

That evening, we returned to Garmisch and feasted on Bavarian food.

Afterall, we had to eat up for our next adventure – a tour of the Silvretta Alps!

See the map of our route!

The post TR: Garmisch-Partenkirchen & Marienberg Ski Tour (Feb 2019) appeared first on 14erskiers.com.