Austria: St. Johann/Tirol, Steinplatte, Pillerseetal, Lofer 2017/18

A snowHead

Yesterday afternoon I skied for a couple of hours on the Steinplatte at Waidring and from there skied over the border to the Winklmoosalm in Germany. It was a beautifully sunny day. This photo is of the Rossalm chairlift on the Winklmoosalm...

The Winklmoosalm is perfect for learning skiers. The Steinplatte offers pistes for intermediates and up top on the Plattenkogel some challenging steeper slopes. This is a view down the Nordhang, the area's only black piste and with the main area in the background...

The snow was mostly hard packed and off piste more like frozen icing sugar than powder (but not so bad on the Nordhang).

There is one development in the Steinplatte area. They have built a new reservoir for snowmaking near the top of the Plattenkogel, the highest point in the ski area. This has blocked off the upper part of piste 7, which leads back down to the Kammerkör area (turning right once off the lifts). Now you have to ski the slope that in the past I have always looked on as a "shortcut" down to the middle of piste 7. Here's a photo of the top of the reservoir...

Like yesterday, today was another bluebird day and I skied in St. Johann in Tirol with johnbarr. There were rather more skiers on the slopes than in recent days but still no queuing for lifts. Snow was again mostly very hard, polished in some places but mostly reasonably grippy. It was good skiing. Here's a photo looking to the Wilder Kaiser mountains from beside the top station of the Bauernalm gondola...

A snowHead

I have repeated the above skiing visits, yesterday to the Steinplatte and Winklmoosalm and today skiing in St. Johann. The weather wasn't so fine as on my presvious visit. Yesterday it was mostly overcast, though with tempting blue sky in the distance. With a friend I also skied over the border to the Winklmooslam in Germany and included skiing down the track to the Seegatterl car park in our itinerary. This isn't wildly exciting and is indeed rather flat at the bottom but the run is picturesque...

Here's a view over the Steinplatte area towards the end of the day when there was a little blue sky...

Today in St. Johann it snowed quite heavily in the morning and we spent most of our time skiing on the excellent piste alongside the new 6-seater Eichenhof chairlift. At one point the weather appeared to be improving and we set out to ski over to the Oberndorf side. However, by the time we reached the top of the Jodlalm chairlift it was again snowing with a chilly wind, so we abandoned that plan and continued to ski the Eichenhof slopes, despite these sometimes being covered in mists...

We soon retired for lunch to the Grander Schupf restaurant and there we had a visit from three Wise Men ("Sternsinger")...

Later on the weather did improve, so that we did reach the Oberndorf side of the St. Johann ski area. And this was the view looking down to the bottom station of the new Eichenhof gondola on our last run back to the car...

The skiing was hard work at times but still enjoyable. The slopes were moderately busy but without any notable queuing for the lifts.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Looking good @espri,
Now the nice new lifts are in, I hope Red 4 is still not too busy.

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4a was quite busy at times but this is about the busiest week of the season. We had 4b virtually to ourselves at the end of the day Very Happy

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Austria: St. Johann/Tirol, Steinplatte, Pillerseetal, Lofer 2017/18

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