Winter Alpine Conditions in Summer
July means hot weather, dry glaciers, firm snow and no avalanche risk? Wrong!
Richard, Oli and I ahve just spent the last few days acclimatising for Mont Blanc. On day 1 I called Laurence, the ever helpful gardienne of the Cosmiques hut, to ask how much snow they had received during Friday's storms. "Welcome to the winter version of the Cosmiques!" was her wry reply, and then told me I had better bring snowshoes to make our planned crossing of the Vallée Blanche from the Torino hut on the following day.They were very useful to scoot across from the Torino to the neaby Aiguille du Thoule on the first day, and we certainly felt extremely smug while skimming across the surface of the VB to the Cosmiques, climbing the Pointe Lachenal on the way.
The bad news when we arrived there was that 3 hours of being bombarded by lightning on the Friday had fried parts of the hut's electricity supply, but the crew were coping admirably under the circumstances. The good news was that the slopes of the Mont Blanc du Tacul had been tested by 30 people already, and the key slope of the Mont Maudit, a well known avalanche spot, had released spontaneously that morning.
You can clearly see the crown walls of the slab which has popped out: 30cm to 2m in depth, and a total of 300m in length. That's a fair amount of snow. The track which we put in the next day goes straight through the right hand pair of crown walls, with a short section of unreleased soft slab between the upper crwon wall and the bergschrund, which we pitched up rather than moving together.
It's always satisfying to effectively manage a risk in the mountains, even if it's slightly unexpected. When the mountain gods offer a lesson, it's best to take them up on it....