Early Ski Touring Opening In The Vienna Region

October 17, 2009

Due to the heavy snow falls this week we were happy to enjoy an early opening of the ski touring season around Vienna. I was studying various weather reports and data, webcams, internet forums etc. for the whole week to determine the location for our opening ski tour. Finally our decision was on the [...]

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Onset of Winter Results In First Avalanche Warning Report Today

October 14, 2009

The Styrian Avalanche Warning Service issued its first regional avalanche warning report of the new season 2009/2010 this day. The northern parts of Styria (Ennstaler Alpen, Obersteiermark) now have an avalanche danger of level 1 (meaning low risk).
The influx of wet and cold air masses from the arctic North has already resulted in a [...]

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The First Glimpse of Winter In the Vienna Region

October 12, 2009

After a long period of mild weather with too warm temperatures it finally started to snow in the mountains. The higher areas of the Schneeberg were already white with some snow and the temperature at the summit (see Schneeberg webcams) dropped well below zero Celsius during the course of the day. And it is forecast [...]

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Skiing the Narrndattl Couloir (Schneeberg)

October 7, 2009

The Schneeberg (literally translated: Snow Mountain) is remarkable in many respects.
First, with an evelation of 2076m it is the Easternmost 2000er of the whole Alps.
Second, it is the highest mountain of Lower Austria, the province surrounding Vienna (and, btw, the largest province in Austria).
Third, it offers a splendid view from the two summits which [...]

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Dogs Love Snow

September 30, 2009
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The last winter was a pretty good one in the Vienna region. Continous dumps guaranteed a series of epic powder days. However in the short run it affected the range of possibilities negatively since avalanche danger in the region stayed at level 4 for quite a long period of time.
That resulted in some [...]

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Mathias Zdarsky. Grandfather of Modern Alpine Skiing

September 23, 2009
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If Hannes Schneider was the father of modern skiing then Mathias Zdarsky should be regarded as the grandfather of our sport. The skiing technique developed by Mathias Zdarsky (known as Lilienfeld ski technique) and his path breaking binding system were instrumental for the propagation of skiing in alpine terrain. As early as 1905 he initiated [...]

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Skiing. Enjoying the Flow

September 19, 2009

A buddie posted the link to this teaser video a few days ago in a somewhat closed area of a ski forum. I thought this video does a real good job in telling the story of what backcountry skiing is all about. Now, that summer is slowly coming to its end it is finally time [...]

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Mountain Massifs Near Vienna And Their Backcountry Skiing Potential

September 17, 2009

There are several hundred backcountry skiing tours around Vienna. To be honest, only a handful of them do have a somewhat ‘alpine’ character. Most ski mountains close to Vienna are below the tree-line (about 1500 metres in this region) and thus are covered by sometimes dense forests and do have a somewhat hilly look. However, [...]

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A Montana Yankee Visits Vienna and Skis the Alpenostrand

September 11, 2009

Alpenostrand is the German word for the eastern fringe of the Alps ranging from the Vienna region in the North-East to Graz and Maribor (Slovenia) in the South.
Some time ago Wade, an American student on his nouveau grand tour in Europe, sent me an e-mail asking for some beta on skiing possibilities in Austria. He [...]

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Lahnsattel. An Avalanche-Ridden Village in Lower Austria

September 5, 2009

Avalanches are a part of the history of many alpine villages in Austria. There is quite detailed documentation of avalanche hazards in the high mountain villages of Tyrol for example. The late Franz Fliri (1918-2008) of the University of Innsbruck gathered old records of many natural hazards in Tyrol for the last centuries showing how [...]

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