Hohe Munde Attempt

The day started with my mom and I driving out of Garmisch in the direction of Mittenwald so we could make our turnoff to Leatasch and on to our final destination of Moos, a small town with a big mountain right beside it called the Hohe Munde.

After making the drive on small mountain road we finally pulled into the parking lot around 8:45 and were on the trail by 9:00. The coverage was pretty good on the bottom half of the skin going up an cat track that was in use back when the ski area was functioning. We got to the Rauth hutte around 45min after leaving the car and began the real tour which goes to the left of the hutte and up the shoulder of the Hohe Munde. After climbing for 20 minutes I put on some sunscreen and took off up the mountain with mom following the skin track behind. At this point I got pretty far out ahead and wished I would have picked up the Motorola radios at home but as they say,"hindsight is 20/20" so I kept on moving getting little peeks of her slowly making her way up the skin track before I headed out on to the face to the left.

Zoom in to see many wet slides. This was shot from the
Rauth Hutte

At this point the snow was getting a little unfavorable for my taste due to a hard crust just underneath a very slushy layer that was getting more and more slushy every minute. I toured for 20 minutes more and decided to turn around within 200ft of the top. It was a bit angering to turn around this far from the top but with the snow getting wetter and wetter I could tell it was the right plan. After skiing down to mom and helping her change from skinning to skiing we started making turns down the face and back to the Rauth Hutte. After 20 turns we got to a small convex roll where we went skiers right and as we were turning all the snow that we had just skied on started to slowly roll passed us. Even after we had stopped to turn around (5 or 6 seconds) the snow was still rolling passed where we had just skied and had accumulated into a sizable mass of snow. The slide itself was nothing that would have hurt anyone because it was moving so slow but my mind was put to rest as to whether turning around on the much larger upper face was put to rest.

Dirt!

After making it down to the Rauth Hutte we eat our food, drank some water, and took a small rest before heading back to the car on the old ski run. On the ski run we were amazed to find that the terrain that we had toured up just three hours earlier was nothing but dirt now.We had to take our skis off for a 30 foot bare section before enjoying the slushy ski all the way to the car where some cold waters were waiting.
Overall this was a great day that tested me mentally and physically. I'm happy that my intuition in the mountains is strong and I can tell when it is time to head down or when it is time to head to the top.
I think for my mom this was a new experience because she has toured a few times with me but never in a place that getting a late start can mean the difference between safety or danger and because of our fairly late start we were close to that line.
If I had to redo today I would say that being in the parking lot at 5:30-6 would be top priority to make this tour as safe as possible before the spring conditions loosen up the snow.

-Owen