With a forecast for overnight snow, followed by sunshine at some point in the day, I decided to take Katherine on her first ski tour. As we left Munch in the morning, I knew we were heading to Kühtai, but had a number of different options in my mind based on the updated weather and avalanche forecasts. As we were driving towards Kühtai, it is safe to say that it was not looking positive with extensive cloud above us, although that was not too much of a surprise as we knew it was improving throughout the day.
What was surprising was at how quickly it improved as we drove up the valley through Kühtai and drove though a temperature inversion. As we arrived in Kühtai to hire skis for Katherine the mountains were basking in sunshine, although it was very cold, I think the car read -8 degrees.
I elected to head to Mitterzeigerkogel, as I knew most of the route from my previous tour in Kühtai, and I knew it was an easy tour up to the Kreuzjoch. We made great time on the ascent, despite it being Katherine’s first time skinning and even the inevitable layer faff was pretty efficient. We were soon at the final slope up to the Joch, as plenty of other teams were skiing down and enjoying the powder, however it wasn’t long until we were also at the Joch.
We had hope to climb the Mitterzeigerkogel from the Kreuzjoch, however in the current conditions it looked like it certainly required crampons and an ice axe, and it was also bitterly cold in the moderate wind with a forecasted air temperature of -12 degrees. Therefore we decided to just head down, which also meant that there would be fresh lines still to be skied.
The snow on the descent as a perfect as you could ask for a beginner at off-piste skiing, fresh and dry powder on a decent base which was not too deep. Katherine made light work of most of the descent and all too soon we were back at the gentle slope down the entrance valley to ski back to the car.
The descent down through the woods was well covered and we were actually able to ski all the way back to the car, which was still in the shade and reading a horribly cold temperature. We quickly packed up and headed up to Kühtai for a beer and some chips.
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