I have a passion for ski touring traverses. Of course I also like single day trips and big descents, but the area you're able to cover on skis in winter during a traverse is so large and diverse that it catches many hearts of touring oriented ski-mountaineers.
The german written book "Die schönsten Skidurchquerungen in den Alpen" gives you an overview of 30 traverses from Mont Blanc to Watzmann. It is written as a guide helping you to know your route in advance, along with its peculiarities in route choice, avalanche safety, crevasses occurence, but it also points out specific rewards of each business (ideal descents, remoteness of the area, frequency of people).
The overview map of traverse locations:
It's rather an exception when the conditions are good for a serious traverse during early winter. Especially the snowpack is usually not stable enough and the crevasses can be little covered (this might be prove the exception of this winter 08/09 with southern alps having overaveraged (150%) snow coverage so early). As the author of the book Peter Keill recommends, every possibly dangerous glacier should be skied on the rope (especially since the rope is usually anyway in the backpack).
Everyone can enjoy it's perfect traverse in European Alps. If you like extreme skiing and exhaustive days with 1500+ m average gain, head for Dauphine, Hoch Tirol, Zillertal or Glarner Alpen. The moderate traverses with more emphasis on landscape views and average gains around 1000 m include classical Haute Route, Bernina, Ortler Ring, Urner Alps, Berner.
Example of traverse description, Engiadina:
The easiest traverses are probably Tuxer Alpen, Sellrain, Niedere Tauern ....
I've personally done half of the Zillertal traverse. The weather broke our plans on Lapenscharte, but the beauty and loneliness of this traverse calls me for comeback.
Zillertal Haute Route photogallery
I've made the classical Haute Route in 2006 with folks from Ziarska dolina. We had mixed weather and snow conditions from frozen concrete to powder, but we enjoyed it as well :-)
The copyright of this book is quite friendly and allows one to make copies for the use on the tour. If you'd like to have few preview pages and don't want to buy it yet, drop me a note and I can help you.
Bibiography information:
- Autor: Peter Keill
- 168 Pages, 130 Pictures
- Format 21,8 x 26,0 Centimeter
- ISBN: 3765441481
- Price: 29,90 Euro (D)
- First edition: November 2005
Links:
20.12.08 Chata pod Naruzim – Mala Kopa – Sedlo pod Ostrym
21.12.08 Chata pod Naruzim– Mala Kopa, Babky
Second attempt for Chopok was succesful, as the winds slowed down. The disadvantage was that all terrain was skied ... only above Lukova we found few nice pow turns.
28.12.08 Strbske pleso - Patria
This classic skitour in High Tatras was long in my sight. As the conditions seemed OK and Zdeno was also happy about this route.
03.01.09 Strbske pleso - Voli chrbat, Vysoke Tatry
Fresh 20 cm of powder were quite nice ;-) Very cold but enjoyable!
