15 August 2017, Dent du Geant & Dent Blanche & General Alpine Conditions

Reasonable conditions & lots of teams on the Dent du Geant today. The loose rubble approach was at least mainly still snowy with crampons on all the way to the Salle a Manger. Gav & James made good progress on this and will be transferring towards the next Dent – Blanche tomorrow. Plan A which was the Eiger which currently has well snowy conditions as Tim found out on the South Ridge today. He traversed the Monch which is a solid AD outing and much harder than the standard SE ridge from near the hut. The Jungfrau now has a track at least to the col.

The Matterhorn remains well snowy with no teams climbing in the last few days and more good sunny weather required. It looks like a couple more days of this or so before more snow on Saturday. Glacier conditions on the Italian side of the Monte Rosa are ‘late summer’ with plenty of crevasses which are avoided by a good track at the moment but would become serious and complicated if caught out in bad / snowy weather.