The week before we talked about skiing something off Handschuhspitze, a summit located in the most western part of the Mieming mountain range aka Mieminger Kette, would be a welcome change to the almost weekly pilgrimage to Ehrwald/Tyrol ;). I went skiing in the Stubai Alps the day before, had been quite busy during the week and wasn’t involved in the detailed planning activities. There are a couple of nice north facing lines and I was okay with skiing any of them. To be honest, I thought about one of the smaller chutes since we haven’t skied anything really steep in the season so far. Turned out we picked one of the hardest descends which became a little adventure as well …
The middle section of the ski line. red=abseil, dotted=hidden, yellow=alpenbock line. Photo (c) Alpenbock.de
Photo gallery
Eduard drops in first and unfortunately uncovers some rocks
Me in the moderate steep top section
Ina finding some great snow
Good chalky snow
Watching the others making smooth turns in less perfect snow conditions also strengthens the own confidence
Again nice skiing above the crux section in amazing snow
It’s getting really exposed here
Eduard already made it through the rocky crux, leaving a little problem for us. Too little snow to descend with skis on and even downclimbing became not an easy task. We ended up using the rope for 25m. Finding a proper anchor wasn’t easy neither…
After the rocky part which took us some time to pass it, the terrain remains at 53° to 50° until we reach the mandatory rappel.
Preparing the rappel
Realising that a 40m rope is little too short in this low tide winter makes for another problem to solve
Leaving all major difficulties behind feels relieving
Snow in the beginning is still 47° but skiing feels easy now
Manouvering through the last rocks
Great skiing in the exit slope
Hard avalanche debris underneath the surface force a reduced top speed
Adrian Earlyup 