It was another sunny day and at 7:30 am we were standing outside the hut ready to head off towards the land of pizza. We headed up the valley to the Similaun Hütte, crossing over the border into Italy on the way and stopping for a hot drink at the hut. Then we continued up heading onto the Niederjochferner. The ascent was straight forward. It wasn’t too steep and there weren’t any signs of any crevasses.
We left our skis at the top of the glacier and ascended the last section to the summit. There were icy bits on the way up and you wouldn’t have wanted to have fallen on the last ridge. I concentrated on not looking down to the left. Clouds had come in and it was snowing lightly once we reached the summit of Similaun, but it was good to stand there at 3606 m, on the border between Italy (well Süd Tirol at least!) and Austria.
We dropped back down to our skis and had a nice descent down the Eastern arm of the Niederjochferner in delicious powder. Then we cruised back down to the hut.
Above left: We headed up the valley and across the border into Italy (South Tirol) to the Similaun Hut. Above right: We had a hot drink at the hut.
Above left: Then we headed up the Niederjochferner to Similaun. After making a ski depot we headed to the summit. Above right: We had a nice powdery descent down the Eastern arm of the Niederjochferner.
Above: The track log of our to Similaun. Map courtesy of Apemap and Kompass Karten. According to the GPS we had an ascent of 1080 m over 13 km and the round trip was 6.5 hours.
