Erstellt am: 27. 3. 2013 - 18:40 Uhr
The Click-Clack Sound of Freedom
I was literally steaming. At well over 2,000 metres up in the Hohe Tauern mountains, I was stripped down to my shirt-sleeves and still sweating as if I was in a sauna. When I stopped for a drink, I could see the clouds of vapour rising off my green shirt, making me feel like an Alpine rainforest.
Up above I could see our goal, a square hut on the mountain ridge that separates Carinthia from Salzburg. Beyond that was the promise of freeride heaven: a long steep run down to Sport Gastein promising chutes of fresh powder. But I`d have to work for it.
chris cummins
I was on a ski tour camp, run by the group Skitourenwinter. It`s designed to cater for the new enthusiasm for ski touring, a sport enjoying an unprecedented boom in popularity in recent years. I was climbing alongside experienced ski tourist Doris Höhenwarter from Bad Gastein:
“I think that particularly young people are more and more connected with nature nowadays,” she told me, “They are looking for freedom and adventure and a bit of adrenaline.”
But to enjoy that freedom and adventure, you need to know what you are doing. I`d never felt that I had enough Alpine experience to venture into the areas I wanted to access and had therefore shied away from ski touring. So I jumped at the chance to join the ski tour camp.
It promised to be a mix of high mountain adventure, led by some of Austria`s most experienced mountain guides, and a refresher course in how to avoid avalanches and how react in an emergency situation. I could push my limits while feeling I was in safe hands.
chris cummins
The night before, in the hotel in Bad Gastein, we`d gone through the theory of avalanche prediction with our guides Georg, Gerhard and Gernot. Then we`d looked at the route. It involved a flattish gradual climb up out of Mallnitz in Carinthia and then a smooth run back down to the Gastein valley which included a brief 40 degree slope.
That`s adventure enough for me.
We set out early in the morning by taking a train that tunneled under the mountains that we`d have to later climb.
Inevitably on route the chatter turned to avalanches – it was warning level 3 on the scale of 5. “There`s always a risk,” said Vera from Salzburg, who was sporting a ABS rucksack that she could inflate for buoyancy in an emergency. “Live life without risk and you`d die of boredom,” replied Konrad, a philosopher from Germany. I stayed quiet. I don`t even like to talk about it.
Soon we were out in the calming fresh air and I was covering the base of my rented skis with the adhesive fake fur that would give me grip on the climb, and preparing for my first taste of ski touring.
“It`s like freeriding,” said Doris, as we climbed above the tree-line. We were surrounded by giant snowy buttresses of rock – an epic theatre of peaks. “We are looking for the perfect isolated slope to make tracks down,” she said, “but I enjoy the climb. It`s just being great being up here and enjoying the landscape. For me, the climbing is often the best bit. I`ve learned to listen to my own body.”
chris cummins
I had set off severely overdressed. Ski touring clothing has made leaps and bounds in recent years. The jackets and trousers stop the wind while wicking the heat and moisture away, but I was in my normal downhill kit.
Yet despite quickly overheating, I immediately grasped the appeal of moving uphill on skins. With not a soul in sight, the only sounds came from the rhythmical click-clack of free-moving heels of our boots as they slapped on the tech-ski bindings and from the smooth whoosh of the ski moving forward on the snow. When you get it right, it is an unhurried gliding step.
“Ski touring is a very special way of moving through the mountains.” Hans-Peter Kreidl, the founder of the ski tour camp. “You almost fall into a trance. It´s a special feeling of freedom.”
As a beginner, however, I had a tendency to waste precious energy in the steep sections by lifting the ski a little bit with every step, slowing myself down, and then I`d I`d find myself moving too hectically to make up the lost ground. I quickly went red in the face.
Often we had to zigzag up the slope and I made ungainly and clumsy attempts at “kick turns”, pushing my leg out backwards and swiveling 180 degrees like an elephantine ballet dancer. I`ll admit that I struggled and that the serene Zen-like state that Hans-Peter had promised eluded me.
But it was magnificent to be there, far from the madding crowds, with a small group of friends, breathing fresh air in a pristine environment.
chris cummins
Every now and again, we`d stop and our guide Gerhard would point out features of the mountain landscape that made avalanches more or less likely. We learned how to calculate gradient, to recognise the effects of the wind and examine the layers of snow. We dug a trench and tried a “compression test” to see how stable the layers were. At the end of the day we were due to practice a search a rescue scenario using our avalanche receivers, probes and shovels and buried rucksacks.
But before I went back to school it was time for a little bit of downhill paradise.
At the peak, suddenly chilled, we peeled the strips of sticky but removable “skins” (thankfully no longer made of seal hide) from our skis and fastened the bindings back down. The light skis felt strange under foot, and I was apprehensive about heading off into unfamiliar snow conditions.
chris cummins
When it was steep, we skied one by one in order to limit the pressure on the snow layers. I waited nervously until Gerhard signaled with his pole that it was my turn and then launched myself into a field of sun-kissed virgin snow.
A suddenly fierce Föhn wind had blown off the top layer of powder and there was the occasional ice patch to negotiate so I started tentatively. But then the slope flattened out and I found myself floating through the soft, even snow, making S shapes in a vast white bowl.
From there, we had to plot our own way down the mountain, looking out for good snow, looking out for danger signals, looking out each other's safety. Because I was sometimes afraid, it felt like true bonding. By Saturday my ski tour partners, who had been strangers 24 hours earlier, seemed like close friends.
chris cummins
Another day of climbing, and skiing lay ahead, crossing streams and zigzagging through a forest. For me it was a magical experience.
I`d arrived in Bad Gastein as ski touring naif, but on the last run down, as I swished downhill past a half-buried mountain huts and launched off a ridge into a steep section of deep snow, I knew that now I’d earned my turns in sweat and found these untracked expanses, I`d never see skiing in quite the same way again.