Summer has finally arrived here in Denmark. Today the temperature is just around 20 degrees and the sun is out. When I look out and see the sun from my office window here in Copenhagen, it gives me the usual craves for touching rock. Fortunately I’m going on a weekend climbing trip to Gothenburg in only a couple of days. I have been a regular at the local climbing gym and I have been punishing my body at the training board in my carport.

While browsing the internet I saw that the strong Swedish ski mountaineer Fredrik Ericsson is now at K2, trying to make the first ski decent. I had the chance to meet Fredrik on several occasions. First when I was trying to climb  Pik Kommunizma in 2003 and later on in Chamonix when he worked at The Bellevue. His project looks very ambitious, but he definitely has the skills to pull it off.  You can look at his blog for updates. I wish him the best off luck!

Fredrik Ericsson - Photo (C) www.fredrikericsson.com

Last week was spent skiing at Badgastein in Austria with my family.? We had perfect snow conditions and even at a few days with nice sunshine. Heidi and I had some great moments skiing ofpiste and putting new tracks in the fresh snow. The area around Sportgastein was closed due to avalance danger, but good safe off-piste was to be found in the woods at Graukogel and Badgastein. Have look in the gallery

Heidi Tracking Powder

Last week I had the pleasure of being and skiing at St. Anton in the Arlberg valley of Austria. Austria and the eastern part of the Alps have lots of snow right now. During my visit we had about 35cm of new snow. So it is important to take care when you go off-piste since the danger of avalanches is quite high at the moment. On Sunday morning the snow level was meassured at 216cm at an altitude of about 2000 meters.

Fortunately we also had some fine sunny days last week that provided great powder conditions. The resort of St. Anton has a good concept of creating marked off-piste ski runs. These runs are not groomed or patrolled, but they are fairly safe from avalanches if you stay within range of the trail markers.

This is a fine safe ski concept. Other resorts should consider doing the same since it makes off-piste and free-ride very accessible in a relative safe way.

/ASN