Pfingstmontag @ P-tal

Some of you will already know there's no place to go



This is the modern man, as good as I am



Here in the heart of the sun my memory melts



Swellegant, elephant pain, he never forgets




Moloko - Should've Been, Could've Been

Superior Logistics

Responsible planning is essential to safe backcoutnry skiing in a high alpine environment. We’ve got it all figured out.

Lena and Flo drive to Kaunertal and place their car at the skiarea parking lot. Simon, Juho, Marika and I also drive to Kaunertal, get Lena and Flo’s car, drive to where we plan to end up later, leave their car there and drive back to the parking lot. At the summit of Weisseespitze Simon figures out that he left the key to Lena and Flo’s car in his car. Juho and Marika defy the radically extreme Weisseespitz Nwand to get the key from Simon’s car, descend to Gepatschferner, use Lena and Flo’s car, for which they now helpfully have the key, to get Simon’s car from the parking lot and drive back with both cars to where they started out to wait for Simon and me to finish defying the even more radical and extreme Fluchtkogl Nwand. Simon then goes to Ötztal with Lena and Flo’s car to pick up Lena and Flo. We drive to Simon’s place in his car, leave it there and drive home in my car.

Weisseespitze, Fulchtkogel background left


Summit done proper.


Contemplating the difference between percieved and actual steepness, which in this case was not what you would expect.


The Nface is a constant rollover but short and without any bad exposure. Walk in the park after last weekend. Simon makes it sound much more exciting and is generally more coherent, as usual.

Harvest past the extreeeeemnessss.





Gepatsch


Some interesting route finding and the glacier spits us out at the cars (remarkably).

Nachtschatten

Man muss ja immer früher aufstehen für den Mist. Das Wasserkraftwerk sieht nachts aus, wie ein Ufo. Dann abwägen zwischen Stirnlampe ja oder nein, sehen und gesehen werden, nicht, dass einen wer sehen würde, wenn, und egal wärs sowieso, aber trotzdem. Rot glühende barryvox Herzen wabern durch die Nacht, bis die Sonne aufgeht.








(Halbe Wechnerwand/ Kleinkram)

Roadside Spring Slides & Linker Fernerkogl

We got a reasonable amount of new snow in April. In combination with an isothermal, rather rotten snowpack on sunny aspects and a sizable layer of depth hoar on north facing slopes, this has led to new features in the landscape. We figure the mountains are suffering some really bad hangovers so it ios understandable that they repeatedly puke into the valleys.



The dirve to and from the skiarea on Kaunertal glacier is usually the most exciting part of any skiday there. This time, upon driving home, we found that the road was temporarily unavailble. We were required to drive along a hiking trail for a bit. The road is here:



Another mild inconvenience further along:



You encounter these every few kilometers and it is always an exciting game to guess if there will be any new ones that you have not seen. When a bigger one has come down, it is always a very social occasion. The townspeople of the quaint little mounatin villages will gather and congregate with the tourists passing through to discuss the delightful pastoral scene of springtime in the alps.



This is the linker Fernerkogel, a mountain between the Sölden and Pitztal skiareas. The picture was taken in febuary on one of our tours to the diagonal chute of 1000 meters of crap.



The summit is easily accessed from the other side via a very flat glacier. It is a very popular tour, you can see some faint tracks at the top from people who have skied down the glacier. After someone posted a tr on ze german board of doing just this, which included some interesting pictures of the current state of the narrow lines coming off to the right, we figured it might be time to pay a visit.

More strange blue colour with Keksie, Kaisa and Veikko merrily trudging across the glacier.



Gratuitious scenery shot



Just a mirror for the sun.



Keksie and Kaisa heroically conquer the summit.



After contemplating for a while Keksie and I back off from the chute and follow the others down the mellow glacier as seen in first pic.



Back in the same place after an earlier start the next day.



If i had enough money to get everything i want, i would own an alpine touring set up. I don’t and i don’t so i made my usual wobbly parallel hop turns on tele gear and in combination with some most elegant sideslipping made it past the interesting top part. Keksie does the same with a fixed heel and considerably more grace and heads for happier places where eating shit is once again a reasonable option.








The snow in the chute was actually very nice but we had underestimated the amount by which the rockfaces above it would warm up even early in the day with cloudy weather. We were not much inclined to enjoy the showers of snow and rocks the mountain was provinding and made sure to quickly fuck off.



Shame Marius missed out as he is usually an integral part of the more interesting adventures in p-valley.

pink

There is an alley of pear trees in bloom and when they lose their petals in the wind it looks like snow.

Spandex clad beerguts on roadbikes are back in force, people appear to have woken up from whatever kind of koma they spend the winters in. The teenage girls who hang out in the skatepark to ignore the boys seem happy that it is once again possible to wear that particular combination of low rise jeans and short tops, which allows the nonchalant showing off of ones thong without neccesarily getting pneumonia.

Fat green meadows and the sweet smelling pink obscenities planted to complement the urban tristesse that surfaces sometimes even here, in our sound of music version of a city, make a strange contrast after days spent in stark whiteness.



While corn is nice there is certainly something to be said for the warm sloppy spring storms on the glaciers.



Powder 8s with Kaisa







30.4. Dawnpatrol, Wechnerscharte

Another early, early morning departure from our favourite powerplant.





Skinned up in the shade and decided on a whim to ski down on the sunny side.



Keksie carving thru the blu

The Velvet Underground

Some things require that one get up very early or, depending on where one stands in these matters, very late. Timed to the task at hand, the alarm clock may yield odd looks from those that the bars and clubs have spat out, the ones that are drifting from oblivion towards bed. Every so often we may get a nighttime journey through moonlight and mountains. Sad flightless creatures, living in the shadowy depths of narrow valleys, we are trapped in a two dimensional world of black sky and blacker mountains. Only the clouds, torn shards of glistening silver vapour suspended between one darkness and another give any illusion of depth.

The endless beat that is the radio at four in the morning is replaced by the sound of blood pumping through veins and screaming muscles as the moon sets and the sun rises.





In other words, corn season – bring it on already.











The lovelys





(Vordere Karlesspitze)

Butter

Die Blumen schießen, die Bäume schlagen aus, die Vögel schreien schon in der Früh um fünf. Erste Firntour des Jahres.









Harvest Season



Sand durch die Sanduhr







aka Hochwanner Ostflanke.