Imagine you want a Chief in REX 45, but all you can get is a Tenacious... and you´re still happy with it! - Sometimes skitouring is like this too...
Job-related I had to drive to an area like 45 minutes away from the city of Salzburg, where there are no real mountains anymore, but more like larger hills. Still there is some nice shorter skitouring.
In a break between two appointments I wanted to ascend the pyramid-shaped peak in the background of the first pic (it is just 850 meters / 2800 feet of vertical distance to the top) and descent the long, a bit steeper slope/hillside that faces to the right.
But standing on top of that hill and looking down the slope I did not like what I saw: Too dangerous avalanche-wise, especially since I was all alone, no one could have digged me out should an avalanche have buried me.
Two problems (some off-topic-skitouring-tutorial
):
1.) If you look closely, right at the top and facing to the right there is a cornice (kind of "overhangig snow") over the slope I wanted to descent. This means that wind had blown the snow from left to right, and under that cornice will most certainly be packed drift snow, that can form a snow slab (dangerous kind of avalanche) pretty easy
2.) The slope is facing to the south, and it was pretty warm. Looking closely, you can see that some fissures/cracks in the snow have already formed, and inevitably sooner or later the whole snow on the slope will go downhill at once... you don´t want to be in there then...
So: I had to go to a mellow and much more boring neighbour-peak, where I then took the pic.. still, as always I had a great time alone in the mountains and the snow, even if today I "just got the Tenacious and not the REX45 Chief....:) (though actually I had my Pac Salt with me...perhaps better than both the Chief and the Tenacious?!)
And:
View from the "boring peak" in the other direction (pic below)
's in 10 different steels
Motorcycle enthusiast
