Alpine summer conditions start well
Darren on the Triftjigrat, 24 June 2011
It's been a great start to the 2011 alpine summer season, with ideal snow and mixed conditions.July is looking to start well too.
Across the western end of the Alps, there was a dump of snow on the 18th June, putting down between 30 and 50cm at altitude. With strong winds and sunshine over the next few days, a certain amount of caution needed to be exercised on steep snow slopes. In addition, snowshoes were very useful for getting about on anywhere but the most well frequented areas. As soon as you left the path, you went up to your knees. As things settled down, conditions tended towards the optimal, and I had a great week with the tally consisting of the Entreves, Rochefort arete, north face of the Tour Ronde and, best of all, the Triftjigrat on the north face of the Breithorn.
On the 27th June, it went very warm with the freezing level above 4000m, and poor refreezes at night. Snow on the Mont Blanc de Cheilon was saturated to full depth during the day and even after an overnight clearing, only refroze for 5 to 10cm from the surface at 3400m. This heat has cleared some of the high rock of snow, so high technical routes have been coming into nick and I heard yesterday that the Kuffner has been tracked several times.
On the night of the 29th it rained a load more and at the time of writing we're waiting to see how much snow has fallen high up. Thnakfully it's a bit cooler so we can loook forward to another round of the same cycle for the start of July.
Bring it on!