Germany

Hesselbacher Gletscher

Off season

No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.

Typical snowfall

71cm

A weather-model figure, worked out the same way for every ski area, and lower than what actually falls. Use it to compare ski areas, not against the resort’s own totals. How we measure →

Elevation: 408–495 m
Across: 0.4 km

We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified. Snow report on the official site ↗

Hesselbacher Gletscher, in Germany, runs from 408 m at the base to 495 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 0.4 km across, with 4 marked runs and 2 lifts (about 0.7 km of piste in all).

Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 71 cm of snowfall a season, 2,656th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 65th in Germany. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (118 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2023/24 (34 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 30 cm.

How much snow it gets

Modelled from weather data the same way at all 3,069 ski areas we cover. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Seasonal snowfall

71cm

per season

Worst of 12 winters

34cm

The middle winter of the 12: 64 cm. The best: 118 cm.

World rank

2656

of 3,069 worldwide

Rank in country

of 75 in Germany

Elevation rank

Highest to lowest, of 75 in Germany. The centre point sits at 429 m, 437 m below the national median.

Compared with what is nearby

Within 50 km in a straight line. Ski areas in the same weather-model cell (about 30 km across) get the same figure.

Ski area	Distance	Seasonal snowfall	World rank
Skihang Dautphetal-Holzhausen	13.0 km	47 cm	2837
Skiliftkarussell Winterberg	36.0 km	92 cm	2461

Runs and lifts

Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Marked runs

Run length

0.7km

Lifts

Vertical

87m

Top 495 m · base 408 m

Run map

NoviceEasyIntermediate Lift

North is up. Runs are coloured by difficulty; black lines are lifts.Lifts that run far beyond the ski area are cut at the edge of the map.

Slope shape, difficulty and lift types

The shape of the mountain

Longest run on the map0.4 km

Steepest pitch21°measured over at least 30 m

Average gradient of the runs12.7°

Which way the slopes face

North 88%

East 8%

South 0%

West 5%

96% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.

By difficulty

Novice 1 · 0.1 km

Easy 2 · 0.5 km

Intermediate 1 · 0.2 km

Lift types

T-bar1
Magic carpet1

See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗

Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.

When it falls, and how winters differ

Month by month

The most snow falls in January. March brings 37% of January’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in Germany (47%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, March brings 11 cm, less than the median of 27 cm.

14cm

Dec

30cm

Jan

16cm

Feb

11cm

Mar

Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters

Winter by winter

Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 71 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2023/24 with 34 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 118 cm (3.5 times as much). For 35% of the 75 ski areas in Germany the leanest winter was 2016/17; here it was a different one.

102

118

105