In May 1984, I stopped in at the offices of the Österreich Werbung to find out whether the Timmelsjoch was open. They assured me that the Alpine pass was, and so I took off on a bicycle loaded with panniers for a couple of nights. Up the Kühtai (cow valley in dialect, sort of: Kuh Tal), which was pretty much nothing but cows and valley back then (well before it became a ski resort). Overnight in a rustic inn and big descent next morning into the Ötztal (of Ötzi fame), the longest damn valley in Austria (bursting with greenery at that point), and up the wall at the back, zigzaging through Untergurgl, Obergurgl, and finally Hochgurgl.
By this time, there were increasingly large patches of snow on the ground. Eventually, I passed a small group of laughing Germans drinking beer on a deck in the sun, thought nothing of it, and went on in wetter and wetter conditions. Pretty soon, a small river was flowing over the road, and around one more bend, I hit a 10-meter wall of snow, right in the middle of the road. Clearly, the Werbung had been wrong. Nothing for it but to turn back.
I stopped by the laughing Germans, who gleefully told me they were up there shooting an advertisement for a snow-blowing equipment company. Apparently, they have machines that throw nearly vertically, but at just enough of an angle to clear a road with 10-meter drifts, a sort of Alpine…
