Last Day "am Arlberg"

When we arrived in Innsbruck in late February, I purchased a "Freizeit Ticket", an IKON-like seasons pass good for many resorts in the Innsbruck area.  It's more than an IKON though because you can use it on many cable cars in the summer, for admission to some tourist spots, and for access to the local swimming pool.  When I purchased it, the cashier said to me "you realize that the coverage period is half over." I just smiled and said, "it won't be a problem."  

The Freizeit includes three days of skiing at the Arlberg.  Yesterday I burned my last, making it my last day "am Arlberg" (on the Arlberg).  The Arlberg is actually one of the easiest resorts to access from Innsbruck because it lies along the main train line to Bregenz and Zurich and thus there is quasi-hourly service on OBB "rail jet" trains that make limited stops.  The rail jet is not high speed, but on the track between Innsbruck and Imst-Pitztal it hits speeds of 150 to 160 km/hr (90-96 mph).  

After about an hour an ten minutes, you arrive in St. Anton where it is a five minute walk to several lifts. Snow was scant at valley level yesterday so the view leaving the station was not especially pretty!

Rather than do a "Run of Fame" day skiing from valley to valley, I decided to focus on a few areas that I wanted more time at and that get a little less skier traffic.  I started though with a run down the Arlberg Kandahar Rennen, basically the route used for World Cup DH and SG races.  It has a south and southeast aspect and given the spring conditions, was the first place to soften up for the day.  I caught an early train and had fresh corduroy.  

It's easy to carve big arcs down a run like that, but running it full gas would be terrifying.  The course oscillates between steeper sections and gliding sections and I tried to imagine transitioning into the latter at speeds of around 80 mph.  Some of those sections were even narrower than the one below.  

I then worked my way over to Stuben, a village and ski area that is typically skipped by the Run of Fame crowd. On this warm spring day, it has the advantage of being north facing, although given the early hour I skied over the back side and started on its one south facing lift, the Albonagrat double chair.  The terrain was a bit like a mini Mineral Basin at Snowbird.

The front (north-facing) side of Stuben drops about 3000 vertical feet to the village.

The terrain around Stuben is a bit unusual.  The upper mountain has some attractive freeride terrain.  

There are also some nice cruisers on the upper half (hard to see in the above), but the bottom half terrain is a bit convoluted and wavy.  There are serpentine pistes that wind their way to the base through this terrain, although I didn't take any photos.  

After lunch, I worked my way back to St. Anton.  Across the valley from St. Anton is a hidden ski area called Rendl.  There is a gondola that ascends from St. Anton to it, but you really can't see any of the terrain from town.  It's a hidden gem in many ways with a lot of open, freeride terrain and even a small terrain park if you're into that kind of thing.  

The southern portion of the resort has three fixed-grip doubles and a real old-school feel, which is very soothing given the industrial-scale lifts the cover most of the Arlberg.  Below are views looking up the Riffelbahn I and then down the Riffelbahn II which reaches just over 2600 meters.

It will be a shame when these lifts are replaced by the inevitable high-speed six pack.  

To conclude the day, I got a final thighburner back into town.  The descent into town is via a west and north facing route, but the south-facing terrain acros the valley above St. Anton is looking pretty baked.  

The Arlberg gets a lot of snow by Alpine standards, but has an abundance of south and west facing terrain and it pays the price, especially in a low snow year with warmth and abundant sunshine.  

Skiing Update

With my son and his fiancé in town this week, we did a Tirolean ski trifecta hitting the Arlberg on Tuesday, Stubai Glacier on Wednesday, and Ischgl yesterday (Saturday).  All three were bluebird days and snow conditions at Stubai were quite good.

I'll focus here on Ischgl, which is located in the Paznaun Valley of western Tirol.  It's a bit of a haul on public transit (for me about 2 hours via bus, then train, then another bus), so I was glad to have a friend invite us to come along with him.  But first we had to play a game of Tetris to get four pair of 92 to 106 mm  waist-width Alpine skis and bindings into the ski slot of a Volkswagen Golf.  Somehow it worked and we were able to add three pairs of ski poles too. 

Ischgl is a big place with an abundance of high elevation northwest facing terrain.  There is a relatively flat area for "combat" skiing that seems to be popular with the tourists.  

But also some great advanced terrain, which for some reason I didn't take any photos of yesterday, so I'll drop in the one below from a few years ago which was taken looking up a chair called the Gampenbahn, which has the longest vertical rise of any six-person chair in the world (924 meters/3031 feet).  

Ischgl is also one of the hardest partying places in the Alps, infamous for a superspreader event at the beginning of COVID. One of my Tyrolean friends jokingly says that Ischgl is German for "evil place."  I probably wouldn't stay there, but I'm happy day trip to enjoy the turns and incredible scenery.  

Ischgl is also interconnected with the Swiss resort of Samnaun.  You can ski both on the same pass.  I've skied the Samnaun side before (it's got less interesting terrain than the Ischgl side), but never skied all the way down to Samnaun.  We figured we should give it a try.  The piste-route descends from off the photo to the right and then into the valley pictured below.  We enjoyed some off-piste powder turns from here though to make it interesting.  

Getting back to Ischgl involves first ascending the double-decker cable car that transports people to and from the ski area above Samnaun.  The photo below is from the top station looking back down into the Samnaun Valley. 

Perhaps if it was snowing in the Wasatch I'd feel differently, but right now I'm not missing Utah at all. 

Classic "Nord Stau" Storm

We have finally gotten a taste of winter here in Innsbruck with a storm that has lasted for a bit over 36 hours in the mountains and has provided a steady snowfall even on the Inn Valley floor.  I had a beautiful walk to the office this morning following the walking path from our flat above town and then across the Inn River.  

Explosions from avalanche mitigation work on the Nordkette ridge above town are shaking the windows of my office currently.  Skies are still overcast, so I can't see the results.  I've been here when you can watch the avalanches from town.  

The snow was produced by a cold-frontal passage Wednesday evening followed by a period of northerly post-frontal flow, or what is sometimes referred to as "Nord Stau" in which northerly flow impinges on the Alps and experiences blocking and orographic lift.  This is the eastern Alps equivalent of northwesterly flow in the Cottonwoods, although the snowfall is much more expansive in area.  Below is the ECMWF HRES analysis for 0000 UTC Thursday 26 March during the Nord Stau period of the storm showing a deep upper-level trough over Germany, Switzerland, and Austria at 500 mb (hence cold and unstable) with moist north-northwesterly flow impinging on the Alps at 700 mb.  

The European radar composite from 1630 UTC late yesterday afternoon was a classic with convective cells upstrea of the Alps over Germany and France.  These were moving south-southeastward toward the Alps where the convection became more continuous over then northern Alpine Rim of Switzerland, German, and Austria.  Note the lack of echoes over Italy, which was in the lee of the Alps.   This is all happening in the wake of a low-level cyclone (i.e., low pressure system) that was producing broader, stratiform precipitation over eastern Europe.  

The "Euroregion" comprised of the Austrian state of Tirol and Italian states of South Tyrol and Trentino collaborate extensively on snow measurements and avalanche warnings.  There is a dense array of automated snow depth sensors in this Euroregion operated by many groups.  These measure total depth and one can access the 48-hour difference in snow height from these sites athttps://avalanche.report/weather/stations.  While not strictly equivalent to new snow amounts, in this case they provide a reasonable estimate of snowfall amounts given the well-consolidated snowpack before the start of this case. 

As is typically the case in Nord Stau, snowfall from this storm was greatest in what is known as the Northern Alpine Rim, which in western Austria is north of the Inn Valley and includes the snowy region near and around the Arlberg Pass (simply called the Arlberg).  There are a number of stations with 48-hour increases in snow height over 50 cm (20 inches).    

48-hour difference in snow height for the period ending ~0730 UTC 27 March. Source: https://avalanche.report/weather/stations. 

Snowfall decreases as one moves southward into the Inner Alps of Tyrol.  For example, in the Alps around the Paznaun valley, snowfall amounts are genreally less than 45 cm and in some areas less than 20 cm.  One area of the Inner Alps with greater snowfall is in the Tux Alps just west of the Ziller Valley, which I've circled in the right of the diagram.  Not shown here are areas farther east in the Kitzbuhel, Zell am See, and Hohen Tauern that also saw more than 50 cm where storm penetration into the inner Alps is often a bit stronger than in the Innsbruck area.  

The Austrian-Italian border (and farther west the Swiss-Italian border) represents the Main Divide of the Alps, which is the hydrologic divide.  Although the highest peaks near the Main Divide are quite high, snowfall is more limited.  There are a couple of sites just north of the main divide with > 30 cm but many other sites have lesser precipitation.  This is not uncommon as Nord Stau storms tend to dump their loads on the Northern Alpine Rim with less snowfall over the Inner Alps.  

Once south of the Main Divide, snowfall decreases further into the lee and South Tyrol.  There are some light amounts in the Dolomites, but those were actually produced during the passage of the cyclone rather than in the post-frontal Nord Stau period.  In situations like this, you have your pick of powder on the northern Alpine rim or dry weather for hiking or biking in South Tyrol.  Just take the regional train from Brenner Pass on the Alpine Rim until you find the weather that you want.  

During this an many other storms, there can be a good deal of variability in the change in snow depth in any Alpine region.  In part, this reflects they large contrasts in the elevations of stations, but also the fact that there is a good deal of snow redistribution by the wind above timberline in the Alps, both prior to deposition on the ground and after.  I'm still trying to learn what sites are generally representative of the immediate surrounding area.  

The good news here is that after a break later today and tomorrow (Saturday), there's another storm coming in.  Unlike what has happened in Utah, this should enable many resorts to make it to their target closing dates.  

My "Run of Fame"

Call it a guilty pleasure given the industrial-scale nature of the resort development, but I absolutely love skiing from valley to valley and village to village in the Arlberg region of western Austria where lift-served skiing extends from St. Anton to the south to Warth to the north, a distance of 16 km as the crow flies and much farther as the winter-sports enthusiast skis. 

I've skied the Arlberg on several days over the years, but yesterday, for the first time, did the full trip from St. Anton to Warth and back.  It was a good day for it with mainly clear skies, a good hard freeze allowing the groomers to hold up well except on south aspects, no lift lines, and relatively uncrowded slopes (by Arlberg standards).  I had enough time to not only get to Warth and back, but also to do some side trips to other lifts and villages.

I caught the first Galzigbahn tram at 8:30 and followed the following village-by-village route: St. Anton -> Rauz (not really a village but a place) -> Zurs -> Zug -> Lech (really above Lech) -> Warth -> Lech -> Zurs -> Rauz -> Stuben -> Rauz -> St. Christoph -> St. Anton.

It was one of the biggest days of skiing I've ever had.  When I got back to St. Anton, I had covered in total about 97 km, including lift distances.  I ended up skiing a bit more to get that over 100 km.  In the end Strava suggested a total distance of 103.8 km, total skiing distance of 62.4 km, and total vertical of 12,003 meters.  

Strava has its accuracy limitations, but those number sound good to me so I'm sticking with them.  

There is actually a ski route in the Arlberg known as the Run of Fame that extends from just south of St. Anton to Warth.  What I did was a bit different than that so I'll call it "My Run of Fame."  The actual Run of Fame is 85 km long with 18,000 vertical meters of skiing.  Based on my experience yesterday, one would probably need no lift lines, no breaks, and no turns to accomplish that.  I won't be giving it a try.  

I didn't waste time taking pictures until I got to the top of the Trittkopf II Bahn above Zurs.  I wanted to be at the "tip of the spear" of skiers leaving St. Anton as they can really clog up the liftlines.  However, it was when I got here that I realized it was not going to be a busy day and I could take some photos.

Descending to Zurs. 

One of highlights of the Arlberg, if it is not crowded (and this is rare), is skiing from the top of the Madlochbahn above Zurs to the village of Zug.  There are no lifts near this route so if there aren't many skiers around (a rarity), it has a bit of a quiet feel.  About half way down you can look northeastward down the upper Lechtal to the village of Lech. 

Once above Zug, there's great views of the ski terrain above Lech.  The Steinmahder lift services the attractive but south facing terrain in the photo below.  I did a side excursion to check it out.  

I think did some more skiing and road a bunch of lifts to get to Warth.  

Warth is in the wet northern rim of the Alps and is considered one of the snowier ski areas in Europe.  It also has a predominantly northern aspect.  It felt a bit more like winter here.

At this point I'd been skiing non-stop for three hours, so I stopped for some skiwasser and strudel mit vanillasauce at a mountain hut.  

I've had better, but the calories were appreciated.  

Getting from Lech to Warth or Warth to Lech involves taking a gondola that traverses some flat and convoluted terrain between the two resorts.  The photo below is taken from the top of the lifts above Warth looking back toward the ski terrain above Lech.  I've indicated the gondola with a line labeled "Lech-Warth."  It actually turns to a chondola with interspersed detachable chairs for the last bit of the route (after the bend).  One can also see the upper part of the ski area above Lech, the route from the Madlochbahn to Zug (approximate with Zug blocked by terrain), the lift-served terrain above Zurs, and the route of the Rufikopfbahn cable cars from Lech to the top of the Rufikopf from where one can ski back to Zurs.  

On the gondola ride back to Lech, I was on with a group speaking an unknown language.  The lift stopped for a long time.  At some point someone from the group asked me where I was from in English.  I said Utah.  They then responded "Ah, Alta." Lol.  They were from Sweden, where apparently there is a chapter of Altaholics Anonymous.  We had a good chat.  

After some more skiing I descended into Lech, pictured below.  The valley at center right goes to Zurs.  The Rufikopfbahns ascend the steep avalanche fence covered slope above Lech and then more open terrain to the top of the Rufikopf.  Look closely for the towers.  

From the top of the Rufikopf you ski some of the flattest terrain on the face of the Earth, but you don't care because the scenery is spectacular.   The groomed tracks in the center of the photo are for snow hikers, but the ski trail on the far left is also low angle.  

I did more skiing and rode more lifts.  Eventually I got to Stuben.  This village is less visited and I had long runs to myself there,.  Below is the view from the summit lift looking back toward Zurs, which is in the valley near the center of the photo.  

I then decided to get back to St. Anton to go home, but before doing that I thought I would ski down to St. Christoph so that I visited all of the villages in the Arlberg.  St. Christoph also has sentimental appeal because I stayed here with others from the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee during the 2001 Alpine World Championships.  I'd love to stay there again, but its is well outside of my price range.  

And finally, the descent to St. Anton.  

Another neat thing about this day is that I took the train from Innsbruck to St. Anton.  It's about an hour and fifteen minutes each way and it puts you within about a 5 minute walk of the lifts in St. Anton.  So, from my apartment in Innsbruck to Warth without a personal vehicle.  Very nice.  

End of German Glacier Skiing

Lift-served glacier skiing in Germany will come to an end this year when the Schneefernerkopf lift on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak and on the border with Austria, is dismantled.

Source: t-online. 

Glaciers across the Alps are shrinking and those on the Zugspitze are in rapid decline. The Shcneefernerkopf lift was on the Northern Schneeferner glacier (ferner is a word used for glacier in western Austria and southern Germany).  I took the photo below of the T-bar and glacier in August 2015 and even then it was suffering with essentially no seasonal snow coverage.

More information concerning the Northern Schneeferner and the rapidly declining remants of Germany's other three glaciers is available at https://zugspitze.de/glacier. 

Parties and Piste

I see that snow has recently returned to the Wasatch.  Hopefully you are getting some freshies in for me.

Here in Tyrol, a monster block remains in firm control, with some Saharan dust sprinkled in for good measure.  

Saturday I didn't ski, but I did have time for a quick tram ride up the Nordkettenbahn above Innsbruck.  There's a terrain park up there, which on Saturday was supplemented with a DJ, resulting in a crowd of youngsters more interested in dancing than skiing.  

The Saharan dust provided a bit of mood lighting.  I didn't stay long. 

Today we skied again at Stubai Glacier, which due to its high elevation is a reasonable option for escaping the mild spring conditions and thin snowpack found elsewhere.  You can find what appear to be some good turns in the photo below, but it hasn't snowed here in a long time so the tracks descending from left in the picture below are like dinosaur footprints preserved in sedimentary rocks – evidence of a former geological era in the Earth's lifetime.  

That said, the groomers at Stubai are firm but carvable and we are having fun.  At this point, my transformation to Professor Piste is complete.  

A Bold Forecast

Going out on a limb here, but I predict tomorrow will be the greatest case of powder panic in the history of the Cottonwoods.  Let's see....

• No significant valley snow this season until today
• Few powder days this season
• No parking reservations required at Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, or Solitude
• It's a holiday week

LCC Is Back (Temporarily)

January 8 marked the first day this season with an above median snowpack water equivalent at the Snowbird SNOTEL.  Hooray.  LCC is back, at least temporarily. The recovery from the storms over the past week in upper Little Cottonwood Canyon has been remarkable.  The skiing yesterday for a non-powder day was really great, with great groomers you could carve the hell out of and an open and well covered (or as covered as it ever gets) High-T providing access once again to "real skiing."  

Although deep powder is the pinnacle of skiing, I always pinch myself on sunny groomer days like yesterday because I didn't know weather and snow like that were even possible when I was a kid in upstate New York. 

Looking down Mambo and remember my roots

Sadly the forecasts are dismal.  I don't know if I've ever seen the Utah Snow Ensemble completely flatlined for a 10-day period, but it is.  

Actually there may be a couple of members in there that produce a skiff of snow here or there as I see a couple of whiskers poking up just a bit in the middle panels, but for all intents and purposes it's over for at least the next week.  The good news is that it's January and between the low sun angle and cool forecast wet-bulb temperatures, Mother Nature won't be spoiling the snow on upper-elevation aspects on the north half of the compass.  The skiing should hold up about as well as it can without a refresh.  

And, given the conditions this year and my plans to be in Austria in a few weeks, I'm looking for a front-side all-mountain ski for groomers and off-piste skiing when it isn't deep.  Although I'm a reasonably proficient technical skier, given my advancing age, I appreciate a ski that doesn't require huge energy input.  If you have suggestions, add to the comments.  

All Hail Lindsey Vonn!

Source: AP Photo/Luciano Bisi

It's easy to become cynical about sports these days, but there are some athletes who deliver performances that are truly uplifting and inspiring.  

Lindey Vonn winning the World Cup in St. Moritz on Friday is one of the most remarkable and astonishing performances I can think of in skiing if not all of sports.  

Before Friday, the oldest woman to ever win a World Cup race was Federica Brignone at the age of 34.  Brignone herself is a force of nature and one of my favorite skiers as she sends it with such passion (she is currently recovering from a major knee injury and I am hoping will return for the Olympics).  Vonn is 41. 41!  

Most of you know her story.  She won in every discipline on the world cup and fell just short of what was then Ingemar Stenmark's record of 86 world cup winds with 82 when she retired.  She is unquestionably the greatest speed skier of all time.  

She retired in 2019.  A knee replacement and a hell of a lot of hard work later, she is on top of the world, with Stenmark in her sights again (although she won't catch Mikaela Shiffrin), not to mention a shot at Olympic gold in Cortina.  

Simply incredible.  

Hintertux Glacier Closed for Skiing

I'm not sure how I missed this, but Austria's Hintertuxer Glacier Ski Resort, famous for being open 365 days a year, temporarily suspended ski operations in August. J2Ski first reported this on August 4.  Although I could not confirm the date of suspension, the resort web site still indicated on September 1 that there are no ski operations.

Screenshot of Hintertux Glacier Web Site, 2:46 PM MDT 1 September 2025

There are some reports that this is the first time they have suspended skiing in August, and ChatGPT told me that's the case.  On the other hand, I can find some social media posts that suggest they suspended operations last August.  It's hard to uncover the truth in the modern internet. 

Regardless, these are sad times, with declining viability of summer glacier skiing in the Alps.  

The good news is that it's turned colder in Austria and I even noticed some suggestions of a bit of snow on the web cams.  

Last Day of 100 at Alta?

At 1 PM MDT this afternoon, the total snow depth at Alta Collins dropped to 99", falling below 100" for the first time this melt season.  There are a couple of cold troughs coming next week so a recovery is not impossible, but given that we're losing about 3" a day right now and have a couple warm days ahead, the odds are such that today was probably the last with a 100" snow depth this season.  

Cover in Collins Gulch remains excellent.  The snow earlier this week buried the snirty snow surface in some areas, especially on high north, making for a bit of a white corn harvest at upper elevations.  

Photo: Erik Steenburgh

Photo: Erik Steenburgh

Although there was a shallow freeze overnight thanks to the radiative cooling of the snow surface, given the warmth (the overnight low at Collins was 43) and the high elevation sun, it didn't take long for things to soften up anywhere that was in the sun.  We were off the mountain at 11 and eating tacos in the shade at Lone Star shortly thereafter.  In other words, a great May ski day. 

We've Created a Monster

Last Week, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah released a detailed fact sheet highlighting the economic contributions of Utah's ski industry.  If it seems like the Utah ski industry has changed dramatically in recent years, this study largely confirms it.  A few interesting tidbits.  

Skier days have really taken off since 2020/21 with each year since setting a new record, reaching 7.1 million in 2022/23.  And that 7.1 million was reached with Little Cottonwood being closed by avalanche hazard for the latter part of the season.  If it seems like there are more people at the resorts than there used to be that's because there are.  

Where did all these skiers come from?  During the 2022/23 season, 44% were from Utah.  The rest came from all over the place.  Want to blame California?  They are the biggest non-Utah source, although they represent only 8% of skiers.  Colorado is good for 2%.  I think they come for the snow. 

One graph examined the relationship between annual snowfall (apparently at Alta) and skier days.  I look at this chart and I see the variability caused by seasonal variations in snow being somewhat small through about 2017/18 when growth takes off and dominates.  

There was no attempt to look at backcountry skiing.  Although the number of skier days is probably a factor of 10 or more smaller, I suspect the growth rate is even larger than the skier days at ski resorts. 

All is not rosy of course.  Access has changed.  Reservations and parking restrictions are now the norm.    Transit options remain limited.  As a friend of mine put it, "we've created a monster."  

Where do you think we will be in 2030?  How about in 2050 when Utah's population is projected to be 5 million compared to about 3.4 million today?  Remember, all of this will be happening in a warming climate.

You can access more at https://d36oiwf74r1rap.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/SkiIndustry-FS-April-2024.pdf