A fabulous week in Austria – hardly a cloud on the dark blue alpine skies. A blazing sun at day and stars so clear you can hear them move over the sky in the cold nights. That was the setting for the second skiing week this year – completely different from the cold rain and hard wind in the Swedish and Norwegian mountains at New Year’s. This time it was crispy slopes in the morning and then increasingly soft snow after lunch. We skied as always hard and with long days in the slopes we covered some serious vertical meters also this week. The Saalbach area offers great slopes with shifting degrees of difficulty and we found some really outstanding spots during the week but on Wednesday we decided to test skiing the Kitzsteinhorn glacier at Kaprun.
With the kids for the first time on a glacier we decide to get a guide to take us around and to introduce safety as another aspect of skiing. We met up with Karl from Zell am See and went through an introduction safety training – just to get the kids familial with the equipment. With the current snow conditions and the areas we choose to ski the risk of an avalanche was considered be close to zero – and sure enough we all made it back :-). We skied in out of the slopes and went through some pretty steep runs with the kids and it all went well. No powder though L but at least some untouched areas. However, hard to ski with crust on top and softer layers beneath. Karl did a good job explaining how to ski in different conditions and after an hour the kids were not going after us but only after Karl – a good sign of trust!
In general the Kitzsteinhorn provide fantastic freeskiing possibilities where also some superb freeride routes that are checked for avalanches are available. From the top station there is a great view of the Hohe Tauern National park with peaks like Grossglockner. I have included some panoramas in this post showing the Zell am See and Saalbach Alps and the morning fog in the valleys. Enjoy!
