Simony Hut
one of our guides: Herbert Raffalt
Hoher Dachstein
Hoher and Niederer Dachstein
Alpine Chough
Gjaidstein
Koppenkarstein
Pressköndel
Ten years after hitting the Dachstein glacier for the first time on a snowshoe course by the German Alpine Club, I had the pleasure to visit that famous Alpine area again on the occasion of a ski mountaineering week organized by the Christian recreation center Tauernhof.
After several mostly cloudy days with some snowfall the last day was very sunny, yet a bit chilly on the ridges due to gusts of wind.
On the glaciers we had fantastic fresh powder, about two feet deep, which was pretty exceptional even in the experience of our guides.
Only the snow on the south facing slopes of Edelgrieß was already a bit heavy and thus inconvenient to handle.
We took the cable car from Ramsau up the steep southern face of the Dachstein massif and headed to the northwest in the direction of the main summit,
carrying our skis. The idea was do the 'Rumplerrunde' around the north side of Taubenkogel,
but after going down the wonderful gentle slopes of Hallstätter glacier towards
Simony Hut,
our guides decided (due to the deep snow) to start climbing again a bit earlier and to pass Kleiner Gjaidstein on its southern edge.
From there we went down on Schladminger glacier, again on fantastic snow (this time just next to the official skiing slopes,
which for some strange reason we nearly empty despite of the great conditions) before we took a lengthy semi-circle with just minor
up and down around Koppenkarstein and eventually dived into Edelgrieß. In total we had some 1900 m elevation gain and loss (including 1000 m up by cable car) on a trip length of 19 km.
A GPS recording of the circuit we took is available for download as GPX file or
KML file for Google Earth.
It can be directly viewed on Google Terrain Maps (including waypoints) and on GPSies (including waypoints and statistics).
| Dachstein cable car | | | | |
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| Hunerkogel station (2687 m) | | | | |
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| Hallstätter glacier towards Simony hut | | | | |
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| | | Simony Hut | |
| towards Kleiner Gjaidstein | | | | |
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| | | one of our guides: Herbert Raffalt | |
Hoher Dachstein | Hoher and Niederer Dachstein | Alpine Chough | Gjaidstein | |
| Schladminger glacier and around around Koppenkarstein | | | | |
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| Koppenkarstein | | | |
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| Edelgrieß | | | | |
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| near cable car lower station | | | | Pressköndel |
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| between Waldschlössl and Fichtenheim, Ramsau | | | | |