Pischahorn, Powder Overdose.

The idea to do the tour from Pischa to Klosters had been in my head for a few weeks. This particular tour is in the book “Die Schönsten Freeride-Touren den Schweizer Alpen” (The most beautiful freeride tours in the Swiss Alps) and had appealed to me since I bought the book a year ago. I have been lacking the skills to do the tour on skis, and didn’t fancy doing it with snowshoes and a snowboard due to what on the map appeared to be a long slog across the floor of a valley and then up onto the ridge on the other side. On paper, to me it seemed like a tour best suited to skis.

Friday evening came and I had the idea to go to Davos/Klosters for some skiing with a group of English Speaking people living in Zurich. I met one of my local friends at a concert and he asked me what I was doing on Saturday. “Probably going to Davos Skiing” I said. “Cool” was his answer, “Want to do the Pischa tour?”

6am alarm clock, pack everything in my backpack, grab skis, get on train to Davos it was all a sleepy blur. We got the bus from the train station up to Pischa and then the cable car to the top of the ski area. Here we put our skins on and started to ski up out of the resort.

Looking back down at the Pisch Ski Area as we start our tour.

We keep skinning up over a ridge and down into another valley and then continue upward.

Looking back towards the resort as we approach the climb up onto the Pischahorn summit ridge.

There were plenty of tracks already in on the way up to the summit ridge of Pischahorn. The going wasn’t too steep and the tracks made life considerably easier.

Skinning up.

Eventually, we reach the summit ridge enjoyed the views for a few minutes and then pushed on towards the summit.

Looking up the Summit Ridge of Pischahorn

Looking down the Summit Ridge of Pischahorn

From the summit we could look down into the valley we had intended to drop into. There had been a large cornice on the lee side of the summit ridge and a lot of wind loading in the valley. There were no tracks and this was the kind of area the Regional Avalanche Bulletin was warning about so we made a decision to change plans.

View from the Summit

Pischahorn 2970m

We had a break and some lunch on the summit while enjoying the view on the surrounding peaks. clicking back into our skis and skiing back down the ridge we had just skied up. We kept going along the ridge past where we had come up from Pischa and kept going until the ridge ended in a rock band with a large coulouir to our left. I dropped in first and skied to a safe place before turning around to snap some pics of my friend coming down the couloir. The view from the bottom doesn’t do it justice in terms of how steep it really was.

My friend skiing the Couloir.

Once we reached the bottom it was time to put our skins on again and ski up to the ridge under Lauizughorn. From here we could look back towards what we had just skied and down towards our final destination of Kloster.

On the ridge underneath Lauizughorn looking back where we had come from.

Looking down towards Klosters. Still plenty of powder between here and there.

After a short break on the ridge it was time to drop into our last descent. A nice open powder field where we got some first tracks (even though I skied like a complete Muppet) before joining other tracks and sking out through the woods to a cross country skiing track which brought us to Klosters.

It was an epic day, quite a while after there had been a decent snowfall in the area and we still managed to find more then our fair share of fresh powder. It was pretty tough going for me and technically probably at the limit of what I am capable of doing on skis at the moment. Certainly a day I am not going to forget for a very long time.

My skill compensator’s. “Movement Spark” all mountain skis. They got me up and down and generally allowed me to do stuff that I never imagined I would ever be capable of.