Just got back from yet another epic weekend (for me Thursday-Friday) of skiing fresh powder that seemed to get deeper and deeper as the days progressed. Here's what happened...
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Heading up the Alpspitze
bahn |
After getting off work at midnight I hopped into the car for the longish drive to Garmisch arriving in town around 3am which allowed me to crash into bed around 3:30am after a quick shower. After waking up around 10 we got off to a sluggish start because skiing was not the first priority today but getting my car to pass inspection was so I high tailed it to post after downing a quick chocolate croissant from a bakery. I popped my new side blinker light cover on my car in the PX parking lot to make it more street legal but still wasn't sure how my car was going to pass inspection because of the "check engine" light that had been on since we bought the car but only time would tell. Mom, Olivia, and I gave the car a thorough vacuuming and washed it as well giving the car a fighting chance for a pass. After that we handed the car off to dad to bring into the inspection agency because they are far more likely to pass a car with a respectable non climbing bum behind the wheel.
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| Mom with her beer |
After handing the car off to dad we brought Olivia back to the guest house to pack her bags for her flight stateside the fallowing morning and Mom and I went skiing on the Alpspitze. There was hardly anyone up there skiing due to the fact that it was Thursday so we skied a few runs working on skiing steeps between the cat tracks. On our way back to the Kreuzeck bahn we stopped at the Hochalm hutte to drink a beer and ended up meeting a Bergwacht (mountain watch) and his dog. He gave us a big lesson about the avalanche dogs and we both learned quite a bit from him. Hopefully I never need an avalanche dog but if I do I would want his dog searching for me. Definitely the most obedient dog I have ever met! A few more turns and a short drive and we were back at the guest house preparing ourselves for dinner. It was Olivia's last meal in the family so we let her choose the restaurant. She ended up choosing one in Partinkirchen that serves traditional bavarian food and loves my family. The number if shnopps we get on our average dinner here is almost unfathomable.
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| Shweine Haxen |
After eating an entire Shweine haxen I could barely move so I had to call off meeting Jeremy at the climbing gym later that night and instead just tried my best to get to my bed for a good nights sleep which ended up being the best way to end the night anyways.
The next morning I woke up early to eat breakfast with Olivia for her last breakfast in Germany and than watched her get into the van and head off to Montana for her second semester, which I think will go just as fast as the first. After sleeping for an hour longer I got into the car and drover to the Alpspitze bahn which was closed due to strong winds so the Kreuzeck was second choice. Getting in the gondola in rain it quickly changed to snow about half way up the gondola but it was more of a rain-snow so I skied 4 runs and then skied all the way to the valley where I was happy to see that it was now snowing in the valley! My plan was to give the snow a little time to loose the moisture so I drove back to the guest house to get my climbing shoes but when I got to the climbing place it was closed and not going to be open until 2 so I gave up on that idea and decided to just sit in the lodge and read a magazine until my mom arrived back from Munich.
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| After an hour of snowing! |
About an hour had passed of me waiting and reading my magazine when she finally arrived ready to ski. I got all my ski stuff on and went out to my car which was already covered in over 4inches of snow. The snow was stacking up very quickly so we made our way to the lifts in a hurry. On our first run we went to a secret opening in the trees and almost couldn't get going there was so much snow. My mom had to follow my trough on the flat sections so she wouldn't stop and get stuck but when it was steep enough to ski it was great! The snow was a little above the knee without a turn so when you would turn it would even higher. We had a killer time skiing trees just off of the Olympia chair. The ass warmer and the face shields on the chair were put to good use today with all the wind and freezing gust of wind. After a full day of skiing trees with mom we made our way back to the guest house for a quick shower. After the shower I called up Jeremy to see what he was doing and we instantly made the plan to meet at the local cure for some food and a beer before going climbing at the bouldering gym.
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Driving over for night skinning
skiing |
After arriving at the bar and getting drinks and food we continued to watch the snow fall for over an hour until Jeremy and I both made the decision that we were gong to pass up the climbing gym and instead go on a night patrol of the Hausberg lift which meant touring to the top and skiing down using headlamps. After meeting in the parking lot we started skinning up the runs connecting one run to the next and going on the cat tracks in between until we were at the top of the gondola. We tried to get into a the D9 bar at the top but they were just finishing up their night and promptly kicked us out after giving us some water in Jeremy's water bottle which was good enough for us because we were just there to ski the fresh on the way down.
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| Jeremy heading up in the dark |
After stripping the skins off the skis and drinking some water we were off at a slow pace. The headlamps were illuminating the snow kind of like using your brights in heavy snow fall. All we could see was a wall of white in front of us and nothing else. After skiing blind for a few minutes a snow cat came up the hill next to us and went down the trail we were on. We ended up following just off of the run in the fresh snow to the side all the while using the cats lights as our own. It was the definitely deepest snow I have skied all year and it was at night, excellent! After 200 meters of following the snowcat and it's very powerful lights we were left to our headlamps again when it turned off another way. This time it turned out to be a little easier to make our way down because of the shadows from the moguls in front of us and because we could see the small red lights on either side of the run coming from the snowmakers. The hardest part I found was knowing when to let your skis run when you needed to make it up a hill in front of you because you can't really see whats coming until it is literally 5ft in front of you. After finishing up our ski we vowed to do another night ski and both drove off to our beds for a nice sleep.
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Jam coming into Garmisch
from Munich |
I knew that this was my last day in paradise but I had to hit the road early to beat the traffic that always stacks up in the afternoon heading back to Munich so I headed to post to eat some subway, got some gas, and after that I hit the road not stopping until I was parked in the parking garage in Weiden. That was a great weekend, definitely more to come!
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| Car in the morning |
After an unusually long drive due to first searching for an open gas station in Weiden and after that succumbing to tiredness two times on the side of the road between Munich and Garmisch i finally rolled into Garmisch and fell asleep until 11. I woke up when my mom arrived back at the guest house and took a quick shower before we loaded out skis, skins and the rest of our backcountry gear into our backpacks and headed for the car for the short drive from Partenkirchen to the old Wank bahn parking lot.
We arrived in the parking lot quickly made a lunch and started the tour to the top. It was our first time on this tour so we toured up the hiking path not knowing that the tour actually starts after crossing a cattle guard and continues along the road until the skin track takes a left and goes up a clear cut next to the cable fun park that runs in summer. From here on out it was a nice skin track through the forest with not many hard spots except for single 20foot section that had very thin snow cover. The highlight of skinning up was gaining a ridge that made it possible to see all the way to Munich on one side and clear to Austria on the other, a beautiful view! After making the ridge it is just 15 minutes or so to the top of the Wank which actually has a running kitchen right now even though the gondola was not working! Very nice but we had to continue without eating a meal because we found some old guys that were going to show us the complicated way to get back down to the parking lot.
After skinning up to the Wank mom was a little tired so she decided to not partake in the night ski tour up the Hausberg to the D9 hut for a beer and something to eat but I thought that I still had some energy in me so I met up with my friend Jeremy and took off up the run at a very fast pace to keep warm in teh night air. We ended up getting up to the top in under an hour which was very good considering his fastest time was an hour and 15 minutes and I had to take my skis of for a section because of how much ice there was! When we got to the top I was ridiculously hungry so I had a beer and two plates of spaghetti bolenese and finished both of them entirely before heading back out into the cold to start our ski down in what ended up being a sea of people! After getting to the bottom we looked back up and you could see hundreds of people coming down with their headlamps winding their way to the base.
