Glacier ski touring-revisiting my limits
- kate Brown
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Pole plant, slide a ski, then part slide, part stamp the downhill ski against the icy slope before committing my weight onto the ski decisively and hope that it stays put. Breathe out and let go of the tension that’s built up. Repeat, until the inevitable precarious kick turn to change direction. My memories of previous trips skate over all the hardships of spring ski touring. All I remember are the silky turns through buttery spring snow or the light dusting of powder on a glacier and the majestic mountains in all their winter finery. I think the scary bits were there but maybe my younger self was better able to brush them away. Now in my late 50s I’m only too aware of how I’m not invincible. This trip I draw on all my years of experience to keep the anxiety demons from dominating. I’m so so glad I’ve focused on breathing, on nice deep,diaphragm dominant, breathing for years. This was my saving grace whenever I felt fear rising on the sketchy ups or when faced with breakable crusty snow, for the downs. Glacier ski touring isn’t for the faint hearted but there is something very special about being in the mountains in Winter. Somehow the mountains seem bigger and us smaller.
After a few low snow years and with summer challenges in mind, we’d gotten out of the habit of hut to hut skiing in April instead biking and running. Perhaps because I felt I’d missed a chunk of mid winter after breaking a bone in my hand in January, I was keen this year to extend the ski season. It’s probably 20 or even 25 years since we’d last done multi day hut to hut touring in the Stubai and Ötztal Alps, so definitely time for a revisit.
And so with a couple of huts booked, a strong weather window of good weather and heavy rucsacs we set off first to the Frans Senn hut where we planned to spend 2 nights. The approach was relatively straight forward with just the one short ski carry section. Austrian huts have a well deserved reputation for offering great hospitality and many are now equipped with showers and small rooms as well as the large dormitories. We lucked out with a room for 6 shared with 2 women and quickly grabbed 2 bottom bunks as ours. With our boots drying on hot rods in the boot room Mark, my husband, settled down to reading the hut book before dinner. We noticed the hut now closes in April rather than mid May as in the past. This was our first indication of the impact of global warming.
The next day after a 6:30 breakfast and mayhem in the boot/ski room we shuffled off up the largely flat ground towards the glaciers. There are multiple objectives from this hut so the mountains soon absorb the people from this busy, large hut. As we climbed higher towards our objective for the day the Wildes Hinterbergl we came across our first difference from the map and guide book description; the Vordere Turm Scharte which should have been possible by ski was instead a short climb over crumbly rock. Fortunately a steel cable was in place to assist us and we strapped our skis to our rucsacs and cramponed our way up before swopping back to skins and skis for the final summit push.
Skiing down on the glacier was whilst not completely untracked, thankfully largely easy snow until the glacier gave way to moraine where we had to carefully pick our way through the rocks. I’d forgotten what it’s like to ski downhill with a heavy rucsac full of glacier gear, crampons and ice axe. It certainly takes some getting used to even without a hand that’s 5 weeks post fracture. I did execute 1 tumble and snapped a pole. Fortunately the hut guardian did some wizardry in between prepping and serving dinner and was able to repair it, much to our surprise. The following day plan A was back on. For this we planned to ski a peak and cross a high pass to reach the Amberger hut. Having not skied for the previous 6 weeks my feet were soft and hot spots were quickly developing despite my blister prevention precautions. It took a couple of hours of slowly shuffling up a long glacier to reach our high point. Each slide of my skis causing me to wince as my little toes pressed against the ski boot shells and my ankles burned. Ultra runners are full of tails of how they endure pain for many hours so I did my best to suck it up and not moan, whilst trying to figure out how on earth they endured the pain. The scenary helped but I longed for us to get to our destination.
We had the option of a long ridge to crampon up to the Schrankogel summit, but decided it was late enough and we should really get on with our main objective of getting over an adjacent ridge to the Amberger hut. There are 2 crossing points on the map. For our nearest, someone had clearly climbed steeply upto the top and back down through a mix of snow and rocky ground, in the recent past. Again our maps showed no rocks, but a steep descent on the other side. The glaciers have clearly shrunk in these parts quite dramatically. We weren’t confident of this crossing. So skins back on we set off to look at the main crossing point described in our guidebook which promised to be straightforward. Instead we were faced with way worse, a long band of rocks with a couple of super steep narrow gulleys. Whilst we carry a short rope for crevasse rescue it isn’t designed for climbing. So we abandoned our plans and descended back to the valley, slightly shell shocked to see how much climate change is having an impact in the mountains in our lifetime. I was thankful that I now do so much strength training, over 2000ms downhill and 25 kms and we reached the car. On returning home we read that the main ridge crossing is now a klettersteig rarely ascended in Winter. A week later more psychologically prepared we went back up to another hut and encountered similar difficulties getting over a ridge necessitating an unforeseen abseil. The Stubai and Ötztal ski tours used to be the easiest, most suitable for novice tourers but now you definitely need more mountaineering skills thanks to climate change. It wasn’t all toil and drama, we did get to ski a massive glacier all to ourselves skiing perfect snow and I’m encouraged that I’ve still got the physical and mental capacity to tackle such adventures. Now that my feet have toughened up I‘m itching to get back out there.
Comments