Alpspitze powder ski!

The top

Hans and I made the first tram up the Alspitze bahn and were soon skinning around the back of the Bernedein T-bar to start the long rise up to the saddle of the Alpspitze. The skinning was hard in the rolling terrain with very flat light but soon enough we had made it to the saddle and dug a quick snow pit to test for stability which turned out to hold very good results. The top layer of fluff from last night came off easy while the bottom layers were so well bonded that I couldn't get a sheer break after multiple hard hits. With this information we kept going gaining the ridge and starting the ridge walk. A few parts of the ridge were difficult to get good feet on the rocks but for the most part we cruised up it without much difficulty even with the new snow. About halfway up the ridge the fog moved in hard but without much wind so it wasn't too uncomfortable to keep moving along the ridge. After the ridge we put the skins back on and cruised through the fog to the summit not seeing the cross until we were around 50 meters out. As soon as we arrived a small break in the clouds allowed us to get a good view of the ski down and lasted until we were around halfway down the upper face skiing thigh deep snow the whole way. 

Deep

Near the bottom the run bottlenecks and gains some steepness so we took turns skiing it as sluff from the previous day of snow couldn't hold on to the steep slope. Everything worked out and we had the best day of the year so far! I usually ski the Alpspitze in April but skiing it with some powder made it that much better!

-Owen

The Alpspitze on a spring day last April. The route goes
up the left ridge to the summit. We had better snow
today!