After a late season dump of snow, and with a slightly uncertain forecast for xc paragliding, I decided to make the most of the snowy conditions and head out for my first ski tour of the year, and my first skitour&fly.
Given the recent snowfall careful route choice was necessary, especially as I was heading out alone. I ended up settling on the Grüblspitze in the Tuxertal, which had the added advantage that I could get a lift into the Zillertal with Becky who was skiing at Zillertal Arena.
I got the local train up the Zillertal to Mayrhofen before changing onto a bus which took me to the start of the route. The first section of the route up from the valley was untracked, which made me worried that I was going to be breaking trail the entire way up, thankfully this was not the case!
The conditions were wonderful with clear skies, wintery scenes due to all the fresh snow and cold air. The only downside was my complete lack of fitness, having essentially done no exercise since November due to our trip to Southern Africa and the poor winter season we have had in the Austrian Alps.
Emerging out of the forest was really wonderful with the views into the Zillertaler Alpen and also up towards Hintertux. As I was climbing towards the summit I was very surprised to find a light south wind as that was not in the forecast at all, but it was very light and there were lots of launch options which would still have worked lower down.
At the summit there was no wind at all, or that’s how it seemed. I made the summit in just under 3 hours, which was slower than I would have liked, but more to the point I was absolutely broken from the ascent, something which only 1000hm should not do.
After taking in the view and recovering briefly, I set up my glider for the flight down. Just as I had finished setting up my glider the cloud bubbled up and meant that I had to wait for that to clear before I could launch, which was frustrating as until that point it had been pretty stationary lower than the summit and I was looking forward to an atmospheric flight around the clouds.
Unfortunately as I pulled the glider up I found that the south wind was definitely still present at the glider height, which I failed to correct as I was focussing on the ski start and therefore had my first failed ski start, which due to a lump also ended up with me lying in a pile of power snow impersonating a snowman.
From here I bundled up the glider and skied down to another area to setup the glider and launched into the descent. Slightly less satisfying than the summit launch, but it was still a beautiful flight down to the valley.
Comments