A very wet and grey Monday morning for many locations in the Northern Alps with rain and snow above C. 3000m, then much better weather is forecast for the remainder of the week, up to Friday. A tough windy and snowy morning up at the Torino Hut this morning with ‘Scottish Winter’ conditions and blowing snow meant the team turned around from the Col Flambeau and returned to Val d’Aosta and are now heading up to the Rifugio Chabod to try the Gran Paradiso in better weather tomorrow.
Tim & Miles made an impressively swift ascent of the Walker Spur with some wet rock lower down; well iced in the red chimneys and snowy higher up.
Whilst we had good conditions on the Eiger at the end of last week and Monch and Jungfrau also, the former will not benefit from this fresh snow, below hut level and it will be interesting to see how quickly this burns off in the good weather later this week and for how long the Mittelleggi Hut stays open. South of the Rhone Valley the Weissmeis and Almageller Huts were reporting thick cloud and light drizzle this morning and could not see any fresh snow up the hill. Routes there will hopefully dry up quickly in the good weather from tomorrow and we are hoping to climb, Portjengrat, Weissmeis and Lagginhorn South Ridge this week too.
Much further South, on the Monte Viso East Ridge, good conditions were reported from a team climbing yesterday.
