Earlier this week we ski-toured up Ponten in the Austrian Tirol. There’d only been about 10cm of fresh snow overnight but the avvy warning was still a three above the treeline, so we proceeded with caution.
It was the afternoon, so we were following the skin-track and it took us about 2.5 hours to do the 800m from the car park to the top of the ridge just below the summit. There wasn’t much snow around and many rocks and trees were still visible.
As we approached the top, we came across a avalanche that must have happened earlier that day. You can see in the photos that it was triggered by a skier on the far left side. The fracture was pretty big though, going about half way across the bowl to the right.
Although we could see the skier had a clear run out to the left and away from the avalanche, we still got our beacons out and checked for a signal.
After checking our surroundings we continued up to the ridge-line away from the dangerous area of the avalanche.
Our first sighting of the avalanche
Carsten approaching the debris
Very long fracture across half of the bowl
Here you can see the skier’s tracks that triggered it with their run out to the left
Some photos below from the top of the ridge-line and skiing down.
HDR shot of Carsten on the ridge
(three photos combined using continuous bracket mode)
HDR shot of Carsten on the ridge
(three photos combined using continuous bracket mode)
HDR shot of Carsten on the ridge
(three photos combined using continuous bracket mode)
Carsten heading down
1/1000, f/7.1, ISO 320 (two photo composite)