This actually should had been a pure autumn climb, with nearly snowless glaciers, sunny weather and clear views, but the sudden heavy snowfall a day before our arrival completely changed character and thus also the equipment for the climb.
We left Prague late in the evening, by midnight we were in Munich and at 2 am we stopped on a small parking place somewhere close to Imst to get some sleep. It was around half past seven when i heard the rain drumming onto the car's roof. I woke up Mirek, who, although sleeping outside in his warm sleeping bag, didn't realize that it's raining:-). We packed all the stuff and made us on the rest of the way. Still some 80 kilometres were ahead of us.
The weather was bad, completely cloudy with some light rain, which already above 1300 metres changed into snow. We drove up to completely white Vent (1895m) at 8 am and an hour later we were on the way up. If someone had told me a day before, that we will walk with snowshoes right from Vent, i wouldn't believe him. The walk with snowshoes was significantly slower and also the lack of sleep from the last night took some effect, so it took us some 4 hours to get to the Martin Busch Hut (2501m). We immediately headed to the winterroom and took a short nap.

October winter in Vent

walking up the Niedertal valley

finally the Martin Busch Hut (2501m)

We spent the afternoon around the hut and the evening chatting with 2 guys from Germany and another 2 guys from Prague. As we went to bed, it was still snowing outside. The next day morning we woke up at half past six and less than an hour later we were standing outside the hut and ready to start the climb. As we were at around 2600 metres, Mirek's snowshoes got broken, which forced us to change our plans, because he wouldn't be able to walk over the glacier to the peak of Similaun. So we decided to head towards the Fineilspitze (3517m), where was chance for less fresh snow, so he could walk there better without the snowshoes. Later it showed up as a completely naive assumption. At the point 2940, the way to Fineilspitze turns to the right.

starting the climb yet in the dark

first sun rays hitting the summit of Kreuzspitze (3457m)

view from 2900m

at the Tisen Joch (3220m), Italy behind me :-)

Up here, some 1 metre of fresh powder is laying, which makes the walk-up in snowshoes very hard and without them nearly impossible. It takes us some 3 hours to get to the saddle Tisen Joch (3220m). So each hour meant gain of only 100 height meters. In the saddle we decided to drop the climb and make us on the way back. Firstly we were quite exhausted and secondly we would have problems to finish the descend before the night comes.
The descend was much quicker, so in 2 hours we are back in the hut. We cook some lunch/dinner, drink litres of tea and are just relaxing. On the next day in the morning we descend down to Vent, where the snow was melting away in a flashspeed. The autumn was coming back for the next couple of weeks yet...

the real paradise - Mutmalspitze (3520m), Hintere Schwarze (3628m), Marzellspitze (3540m) and Similaun (3605m)

view back to Similaun (3605m) during the descend

Vent 48 hours later...