In reply to OG:
Hi everyone - thanks for the v helpful conditions advice - just got back from a week in the Zermatt/Saas areas.
In the hope it’s useful for others, here’s what we encountered:
- lots of unconsolidated/soft snow on rock ridges early in the week. We broke trail on a v snowy Breithorn full traverse on Monday 1/7 - challenging and somewhat slow conditions. Snow covered much of it, with poor soft snow conditions. Large soft snow mushrooms, insecure snow knife edges, abseils and rocks buried, hard to protect many sections etc. Took more than guidebook, about 10.5 hrs from Ayas hut to KM cable car. Snow much better pre-Sun, so a v early start recommended. With some snow melted (and what’s left refrozen) it would be in much better / easier condition. But it was doable and (in hindsight?) great fun. Watch out for the cornices!
- given all the snow, we switched to routes that were meant to be snowy… the Dom was in good good condition, albeit the unconsolidated snow on the upper/steeper part of the normal route made for heavy going.
- as of mid last week nobody had climbed the Dente Blanche, due to lots of snow
- Saas is open, albeit a huge recovery operation underway after some enormous looking floods/mudslides
Post edited at 21:24