Garmisch: Wank skitour - Jan 19
Wank was on the list as it has nice views towards Garmish and peaks surrounding it (checked the header picture here?). The forecast for today was not much promising, light snowfall with winds entire morning, cloudy in the afternoon (temperature spike - melting snow later).
Few cars only parked at Wankbahn in the morning, looks promising. It is possible to start skinning almost from the parking lot. The first third goes on the forest road. I expected poor visibility today - snowing with wind, not best combination sometimes. It starts being more steep on the way below Ameisenberg (as soon as I left the forest road). Kick turns becoming the thing too often here. There are few possibilities for freeride around - I can spot some old lines. The visibility is poor on the top, wind became much stronger on the top and continues snowing. Quick rest with lunch at Wankhaus allowed me to see Garmisch from the top - it cleared twice for a minute.
The descend goes to Esterberg, using old ski piste that is not “in use for alpine sking” anymore, available for ski tourers/freerides. I can see someone followed the road, won’t do that if there is 30 cm of fresh snow. Going straigh down until I reach Esterberg. It becomes quite flat, I should have put back my skins but was convincing myself I could do it without (few minutes of pushing with ski poles, why not). Takes about 2 kilometers to start going down wihtout any effort. I did not ski to the car parking lot as the temperature raised after noon. The road was sometimes without any snow (also some car passed and helpted it).
Tour info
- Drive
- 1 hour 10 minutes drive from Munich, note: there are always traffic jams on the way to Garmisch. I was 20 minutes late due to new snow on the road and lot of cars in early morning
- Start
- Parking lot at Wank lift (Wankbahn), free
- Ascent
- around 2:20 hour
