Skiing the Gletscher: Kitzsteinhorn

As I am sure I have whined about this before, "winter" here runs from October through April, so finding something to do here other than skiing can be somewhat of a challenge.

Considering how slushy the snow has been on home mountain Schmittenhöhe, I suggested to Jason we go do some glacier skiing. The Kitzsteinhorn is less than 10 KM away and it gets fresh powder every night!

Jason and I get the "we live here" discount too, so it is not too terribly expensive.

Before hitting the slopes, we went to the top observatory deck. Here is a different view of Zell am See, framed by clouds.


The skiing was OK. Yes, there was fresh powder, but there were also a whole lot of tourists. The past few days on the Schmittenhöhe had been relatively tourist-free, which surprised me because Zell am See seems to be alive with guests. Evidentially they were all just coming to the Kitzsteinhorn. Sometimes when it is too crowded it is hard to enjoy yourselves because you have to be such a defensive skier/boarder.

The slopes are all above the tree line so you can see everything. I got a little excited by all the challenging rodeos (ungroomed marked trails, for more advanced riders), but not sure Jason enjoyed them as much... the quality of snow and the terrain made for some challenging riding. Here Jason is coming out of the bowl in the background (that nearly killed us).

What is interesting is that the actual slopes are very high up, higher then the top of the Schmittenhöhe, so between 2000-3200 meters.

There is also no way down to the parking lot, which means the slopes all start closing as early 3:45 so that people can get shuttled down to the parking lot via one of the 3 main lifts before 4:30. Since everyone feels like they need to make that last lift, it can get kinda sciencefairriffic.

Also, there is only one slope down to catch the final lift that takes you to the parking lot. No matter how good/bad people are, EVERYONE starts stampede-skiing it at 4:00. By this point of the season the run is literally a sheet of ice. Now add a million inexperienced, over confident and unaware skiers and you have challenge.

Still, it was a nice change of scenery and a good break from the snow-cone spring conditions I have been putting up with. It was really fun to shred some new territory and get a final taste of real snow before summer hits!