This year the choice fell on Rauris. We had booked super apartment short walk from the cabin in the Mountains Resort and Spa for quite funny money. When I started a month ago to monitor conditions at the resort and just before leaving the weather was more and more clear that it would be best to visit Honza Sova and borrow some slalom skis to have at least some fun on the slope.

Already arrival showed us the same. Green field everywhere and white line was probably above 1400 m. The slopes were nice but honestly at the top at 2,200 meters was off-piste with poverty 40 cm of natural snow. Simply disgusting. When I was here last time a few years ago there were about two meters more snow. Well, the slopes were prepared perfectly, little people, so I can at least have some fun with family on the slope.

The next day it rained so that it was not even worth thinking over some skiing. We rather went to the thermal waters  to Gastein. Evening we walked in the rain and snow quite restful. Perhaps something falls off, I thought. We decided to try to go to Dorfgastein - Grossarl.

Good choice. There was much more snow. Already the first bounce of the slopes we went to off piste and it looked very promising. The first hour we went for a family resort tour, just to show them a small guide and after that we quiclky jumped off to the backcountry. First we tried the face below the cable car from Grossarl. Super snow and even right there was a layer of fresh powder but all those tracks are easily reached by all kind of skiers. After two hours its done. It was necessary to go ahead and try something else. And so we decided to rise under the face called Fulseck. It's a big couloir  falling toward the Grossarl. Before we went there were only about two people, otherwise the face stayed untouched for the whole day. And it was so good, nipple deep. Again, we have experienced in a long time how it feels, drowning in powder. It never gets old.

  The next day we chose Wagrain. To us it was clear that it will not be about fresh tracks in new pow. It was foggy and snowing, so that sometimes we have not seen each other. Sometimes I just quickly jumped off the piste and it was soo deep but without visibility.

The rest of the week we had stayed in Rauris. We got a 30cm+ of fresh pow so we had a lot of work to do as zou might imagine. The best conditions were next to last anchor in a large couloir below the top Reissrachkopf. The guide here at  PWL has this track marked as No. 8 and there again we have experienced what it is a proper powder diving. However, visibility was zero again and again, sometimes it snowed but mainly white wall. And so we mainly went touchline adjacent to one another in the woods next to the anchor. Every time the visibility improved for a moment, we went into the couloir but otherwise we stayed in the woods. Basically we were there with Libor ourselves, only sometimes we saw some other guys.

We could not shoot too many photos. The conditions for shooting were not really good but mainly we wanted to ride. So the misery, to what it looked like from the beginning, it turned out very well.

But frankly speaking I am looking forward to the bike.

Author: Petr Lyčka