kölnbreinSpitze
ANDA At 3:50am alarm clock goes off…. Yep, for real. I’m up and making my yummy coffee, I love my red Dēlonghi espresso machine! Zala and Luka are still happily asleep. I just hope they really will get up like they said last night. Shouldn’t be too hard, they only need to get into Modrček, our blue van here. And they do, oh, these two!! I’m telling you, pretty awesome adventure buddies! At first light (around 4:30am) we are leaving Maribor, at 7:56am we pull up next a high snowbank next to a big, BIG dam at the end of Maltatal, Kärnten, Austria.
It’s been a super rainy, cold and snowy May. I look into the blue sky above us and think: “we are soooo ready for an awesome backcountry ski tour, Euro style!”
ZALA Hey! It’s Zala from the SMALLadventureS team! Writing to you guys from Maltatal, Austria. Maltatal, Austria? Maltatal is a beautiful green valley, topped off with mountains and beautiful waterfalls! It is about a 3 hour drive from Maribor.
We left HQ at 4 in the morning! When we got to Maltatal we were amazed by all of the waterfalls pouring down all around us! We are going to ski Koelnbreinspitze at the end of this gorgeous valley.
We get up to the snow line and start skinning. The view at the base of the mountain is of a huge dam and a frozen over lake. Up and up straight almost vertical frozen snow. Ski crampons screeching and scraping along in disagreement with the snow conditions. We make it to what we thought was a ridge and have some cookies and film our intro. We continue on past the false ridge, ski crampons still gripping in the now softer and heavier snow.
Eventually we make it up to a saddle with a huge overhanging cornice. We walk up to the summit in our boots and have a snack. We head back down to the saddle and get ready for the ski down! The snow conditions are now a lot heavier and wetter than this morning but still good enough.
Lets go! We start skiing and the snow is decent. The sun is blinding us, shining up from the snow and down from the sky. We laugh at each other admiring our beginner ski technique when our ski tails sink into the wet snow half way through each turn… We get down to the base of the mountain and cross some avalanche debris.
Next thing I know we are changed and already doing handstands as we explore the dam. It is a huge concrete structure with a cool looking glass overlook platform. There is a police helicopter that keeps flying around and landing on the dam ever so often. We go inside the circular hotel nearby and learn about how the dam works and how they use the water and hydro power at the hotel and how it services the entire valley.
