alpinist

Congrats to 27 year old Colorado native Joe Brannan, 6th person to ski all of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks! Till now I’ve known the fourteener skiers pretty well by the time they’ve finished their projects. It helped that all were from this area (including Crested Butte).

News items about backcountry skiing, including an avalanche, Colorado items, and skiing the fourteeners, opinions about ski touring issues.

Grieskogel is a medium sized ski peak in the western Stubai Alps, in the Larstiger mountains between Sellrain and Hochstubai. You reach it for backcountry skiing via the usual network of roads you find in this area, in this case reminding me of spring skiing on Independence Pass back in Colorado. I’d hooked up for today’s trip with Manfred Barthel, the Austrian alpinist elder I’ve come to know over the past few years. Manfred continues to amaze me with his skill and endurance, not to mention his amazing knowledge of the Alps. He seems to have a sixth sense of where the snow is good, the avy danger lower, or the

(Note, I’ve got a few more trip reports to file from the latest EU trip, but this is the last of the Silvretta posts. To step through the Silvretta trip reports, start here.) Six days straight of nearly 100% bluebird…

If you want more than low angled glacier touring, build climbing or layover days into your Silvretta Traverse schedule. Stay at any of the huts for two nights or more, and you have time for some leisurely peak bagging or…

Silvretta Traverse, Switzerland and Austria. We had down to the Tuoi Hut for lunch, then over Vermuntpass to Weisbadener (Wiessbadner) hut for a few nights stay.