UKC

Hi

Got a week off in August and have a friend to go with.

We have been to Cham a couple times but would not call ourselves experts - where else is good to go in the Alps which has the following.....

• Good selection of easy routes
• English guidebook
• Access from a northern UK airport
• Cheap(ish)
• get on snow / glaciers

Thanks in advance

Hugh

In reply to Hughsaints:

Saas Grund. Fly to Geneva then train and bus to SG. Good variety of routes

..

In reply to Hughsaints:

given the state of play now after last summer and this winter, i expect anything glaciated to be a death trap come august! 

sadly august is really not the time to be going on 'summer' alpine hollidays any more. if that is the only time that you have free, then use it to go rock climbing somewhere. come out in may or early june if you want 'summer' alpinism...

In reply to Hughsaints:

I really want to go to Saas Grund / Saas Fee this year but it's picking the right time, hoping for June/early July.

I'm considering the Pyrenees as a summer alternative to the Alps if conditions continue to look bad. No climbing snow/ice though, just rock. Lots of lovely looking ridges on 3000m mountains, must get there one day. I have a selected climbs guidebook & guide to the range already.

Alternatively, if you're not too old & lazy like me you could take up ski touring to enable you to access Alpine huts & climbing routes in spring.

In reply to Hughsaints: Threads like this on the Alps are full of doom and gloom nowadays which is understandable but not the full story. True, the state of glaciers and ice faces in the summer is deeply disappointing as we all like to get our crampons and axes going on snow/ice routes but the warming doesn’t mean there is nothing to do. Rock climbs and high ridges remain in perfectly good condition if approached carefully. I am going to Saas Fee in September and have no doubt there will be plenty to do: pure rock routes like the Portschengrat or Jagegrat are fine; high ridges with relatively safe glacier approaches like the Nadelgrat, Lagginhorn or Weissmies will be ok. I certainly won’t be doing the north face of Lenspitze or trekking up the Strahlhorn glacier at that time of year but hey-ho - for the keen and flexible (who can ski) they are available in other months! Better regard the bottle as half-full - any of the major Alpine centres will still give you a good holiday in the summer months if you are sensible with route choice, and the warm summers have provided some lovely settled spells of weather in recent years! On the other hand, I can confirm the Pyrenees are a wonderful alternative if you don’t mind no snow at all - I know ‘cos I live there! And look, it’s SNOWING outside this morning…….

In reply to Webster:

Disagree with this. 1. Lots of glaciated mountaineering doesn't involve snow cover anyway, so doesn't matter. 2. Poor winter means snow lines will be higher - see above. 3. Agree that accumulation area snow may well be thinner - but let's see what the spring and summer brings before jumping to conclusions. A winter with low accumulation does not NECESSARILY equal a summer with thinner snowpacks - spring could be long and cold, as could summer. Time will tell. The outlook ain't great for sure, but putting every glacier in the "death trap" category is pretty hyperbolic in my (proffesional) opinion.

May/early June is possibly the worst recommendation of all. Seasonal snow cover is still around well into ablation areas and is v thin. May/June isn't going to become the new June/July for a good few tens of years yet.

In reply to Hughsaints:

At that time of year you could go rock climbing in the dolomites instead. It’s great and very scenic.

In reply to Hughsaints:

Arolla?

In reply to Sean Kelly:

+ 1.

In reply to ianstevens:

There are plenty of examples from recent years that prove your point:

Summer 2006 was roasting with a 2 month sustained heatwave in June and July. The following winter snowfall was very low, however, due to the wet late spring and summer period, people climbed the Ginat in August 2007.

In early 2016, snow cover was well down on average across the Alps and yet the spring and early summer were cool and wet and cover on the glaciers was good that summer.

It all depends........ 

Also, disregarding alpinism for a moment, it needs to precipitate a lot this spring and summer across Europe due to the current low soil moisture, otherwise any heatwaves this summer will be amplified quite a bit.

In reply to Hughsaints:

I have been living in the mountains in France the last few years.  As others have said we can get snowy, cold periods but in recent years I have not gone any where near snow/glaciers in August.  Mountains that are held together by ice (2800m-3600m roughly) also start to fall down.  For snowy routes you want snow. Often these are grey ice by early August.  Possible but often unpleasant and sometimes dangerous.  Things often settle down again in early Autumn.  Very careful route selection and knowledge of recent conditions is what's needed and Brits often struggle with this partly because (as the OP says) they rely on English language guidebooks which are often wildly out of date and can't tap into local knowledge of recent ascents.  Having said that Saas and Arolla have lovely things you can do in August.  Campsites are much cheaper in Arolla as lifts aren't included.

In reply to Hughsaints:

My concern with climbing in the Alps in the traditional summer season isn't so much the state of the glaciers or snow cover on faces. These can all be assessed on a case by case basis and to some extent information obtained from online reports or guides offices etc.

The big worry for me is that most of the Alps is a pile of choss held together by permafrost which is becoming increasingly less "perma" every year. There were a disturbing number of huge rockfalls in the Alps last summer and the likelihood of a ridge or face substantially collapsing is much harder, if not impossible, to assess compared with the state of a glacier.

As others have said, The Pyrenees is a viable alternative to the Alps during July and August. It offers Alpine style mountaineering adventures albeit with little in the way of snow or glaciers but therefore without the associated problems of them in a warming climate. Having already substantially de-glaciated a long time ago, most of the choss that was permafrost dependent collapsed long ago

In reply to pec:

Completely agree with you.  "De-glaciated" mountains are the place to be in August.  Lots of those to choose from.  A lot of the Écrins falls into that group.

If you google "Ludo Ravanel" you will find a lot of interesting work on "piles of choss held together by permafrost".  For instance he has been trying to stop the Cosmiques hut suffering the same fate as recently befell the Fourche bivy and ending up on the glacier several hundred feet below.

In reply to pec:

Permafrost 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230322-how-climate-change-is-melting-p...

I'll land this here, it might interest folk.