on March 15, 2018
In February 2018, in preparation for my International Mountain Leader Winter Assessment, a group of us headed to Innsbruck to undertake a six day hut to hut Snowshoeing tour in Austria. The tour departed almost from Innsbruck City Centre and over the six days we would snowshoe over mountain ridges to Vorderlanersbach, a town just outside the major Austrian ski party town of Mayrhofen.
The planning for this trip took place in September and October 2017. Trying to find suitable dates for a group of people is always the challenge, made slightly more complex this time due to my Winter IML Training and Winter IML Assessment dates being already fixed for January and early March. A suitable date chosen, it was time to book huts and accommodation.
To save my holiday time (it’s very precious), we would start on a Friday afternoon, this fitted well with the Easyjet flights from Bristol Airport. We contacted the hotel for the final nights accommodation in advance, flying with four sets of snowshoes, ski poles and safety equipment (ropes, ice-axe, snow shovels, snow saw etc.) meant that we had a large holdall that we didn’t really want to carry for six days in the hills, we had enough to carry, and the hotel was very accommodating and allowed us to leave our holdall with them. Thankyou Pension Stoi.
Catching a bus from Innsbruck main train station we headed to the Patscherkofel ski area for our hike to the Patscherkofel Schutzhaus hut. It was a bit murky when we left and it didn’t improve much. A mix of forested tracks and a bit of the ski area soon saw us ascending up towards the hut with the clouds clearing, albeit it quite cold at -12c.
Day 2 saw us heading from the Patscherkofel Hut to the Glungezer Hut. Following the advice of the hut guardian at the Schutzhaus Patscherkofel, we took the main path to the summit of the Patscherkofel as the alternative (and shorter) route would have taken us through some avalanche prone terrain. This slightly longer route was on a very good path which meant we made good time to the summit. The route then followed the ridge that can be seen in the photo on the right, with the route mostly following just above the tree line. The team here are some of the only other snowshoers we saw all week. This was a very long day with a lot of trail-breaking and route finding.
We arrived at the Glungezer Hut as the light was fading and in very flat light. The route choice here could possibly have been better as the final approach to the hut was up a steep incline in deep snow. We were welcomed at the hut with some schnapps on the house which was great to warm us up.
Day 3 saw us deviating from our planned route. The day was planned to be a very long route along the ridge for us to access Navis in another valley, however the final descent route would have taken us down some fairly steep South facing slopes and we would have reached these late in the afternoon and the forecast was for a very sunny and warm day following days of cold temperatures and snow. A few of the team were also feeling the effects of our 1.5 days already, we’d already covered around 2000m of ascent and around 20km on snowshoes in this short time. So we decided to descend to Tulfes. Descending through an off-piste ski area and then some ski slopes we could access a chairlift to save ourselves from a long zig-zag through the trees. From Tulfes we took a bus and train to Matrei. As it was Sunday there were no buses, so a taxi took us to our Hotel for the night.
Day 4 saw us back on route from Navis to the Lizumerhutte. There were a shortage of huts for this area, hence the hotel at the end of Day 3. This hotel was also several kms further down the valley than we’d hoped, but we made a rapid ascent with the snowshoes on our packs to the start of the days trail. It was a cold start as this is a steep sided valley, but the forecast was for a nice sunny day. The track from Navis to the Klammalm (unfortunately closed in Winter), forms part of a loop from Navis, so we had the benefit of quite a good track to start the day, so good progress was made. After a brief snack stop outside the Klammalm in nice sunshine we started the ascent up to the Klammjoch. This area felt very wild and remote, so the sunshine was welcome to help with the navigation, especially as this area was quite complex with lots of dips and mounds. Once at the Klammjoch the weather turned windy and there was a lot of snow being transported onto the slope we had to descend. Once safely down the valley we had some fun
“telemarking” on the snow-shoes down towards the hut. This was a great hut, we had a private room for the four of us, ensuring a peaceful nights sleep. The wife of the hut guardian is Korean and was an amazing host with a fantastic sense of humour, so we spent most of the night laughing with her and trying the locally produced Schnapps.
Day 5 was from the Lizumerhutte to the Weidener Hut. Our plan was a gently rising traverse up to the Krovenzjoch, but a chat with the Hut Guardian again gave us the information that the slopes we would be crossing on this route were very avalanche prone due to the very heavy snow and windy conditions of this season. He proposed that we follow the road, this wasn’t too much of a hardship given that this area doesn’t use cars during the winter, so the road
was fully covered in snow, the only downside was that this lost us 300m of elevation, so our day with the least amount of vertical ended up as another 1000m ascent day! The steep ascent through Hochleger seems to be a popular ski tour, so we saw a few teams on this day on our way to the Krovenzjoch. Once at the Krovenzjoch I didn’t like the look of the descent as the slopes below the col were steep and had suffered a lot of windloading of the snow. I found a line a bit further away from the col that gave us a great descent line.
This ended up being a long descent day as the valley that we dropped into was quite long, but with amazing views we had some great fun. It helped that the snow was knee deep down this section. The final section of the day was quite hard work. There were no tracks through the forest and the downsides of trying to follow a summer path soon became apparent. A few ups and downs and a stream crossing later, we had the final task of a 100m ascent up to the hut in fresh powder snow.
The final day was the small task of travelling from the Weidener Hut to Vorderlanersbach. The forecast was not the best with snow showers and whiteout conditions forecast, but there were some tracks already in for some of the route. The plan was to head to the Geiseljoch, however once we started the ascent it became apparent that the planned route would have to cross some very large cross-loaded slopes. Therefore I took an ascent up towards the Nafingjoch. This was complex terrain, so I was glad that there were breaks in the snow showers that allowed me to choose a safe route through the terrain. Once on the ridge we decided to head to our original target of the Geiseljoch just as the weather closed in on us again. After cutting some steps through a 3m windlip so that everyone could get down safely we started our descent to Vorderlanersbach. This was a challenging descent as the terrain was steep and our planned descent was not obvious on the ground.
There were large glide cracks below us and the convexity of the slope made it difficult to choose an appropriate route choice. This resulted in around 200m of descent front-pointing in snowshoes, well nearly 200m, some of us slid the final part, which in fairness was a relief. The final section was a walk down the road into the town. We had a bit of time to wait for our bus, so we joined the apres-ski crowds in a local bar for a celebratory drink.
Overall we covered 65km and climbed nearly 5000m over the six days on snow-shoes. We all thoroughly enjoyed the trip and can’t wait to do something similar again.
