Description

The unavoidable long road walk to access the snow took quite some time up another South Tyrolean valley, the Valser Tal.

This allowed us to soak up the peace of this agricultural area, the top end of which had some enormous quantities of avalanche debris, long before we got to the snow itself.

By now it was hot and we had some debate about the exact line to take up the SW facing ground, but in the end we decided the terrain was largely stripped of snow on this side, but luckily on the summer footpath there had just enough snow to skin up. Above here we all felt pretty tired in the beating sun, in the knowledge we had another 1000m of height gain above us.

Watching the odd skier from the Hintertux ski area casually skiing down didn't make it feel any easier.

Eventually we arrived at the pistes at a high col of about 3200m, before easily dropping down to the lovely, modern Olperer bivi hut, very well located with amazing views to the S.

It had a roaring fire which a few others had put on, very comfy bunks and even a proper toilet.

Luxury bivi!