There have been several recent threads that mentioned changing conditons in the Alps. I was climbing recently in Chamonix, and I took some pictures that show some of these changes.
Over Easter weekend, my partner went up to climb some of the "alpine cragging" mixed routes on the Grand Flambeau. Our goal was Cuore de Ghiaccio, which is about 4-6 pitches at M5, although the grade varies considerably with conditions. I've climbed this route before, in the fall of 2021, so it was interesting to compare conditions between seasons and years.
The first picture below is looking down from the belay on the first pitch of Monia Mena, a neigbouring route, in fall 2021. As you can see, the holes are pretty open, and general snow cover is low, although it was nice and cold. The second picture is looking down from the belay on the first pitch of Cuore de Ghiaccio this spring. The holes are filled in, and there is good snow cover. It was sunny and cold.
So, at first, it seems to make sense. There is much more snow in spring than in fall, especially following the snowfall that preceeded our visit. However, the route itself was just dry snow, gravel, and loose rock. There was no nieve, ice, or consolidated rocks as there were in fall 2021. The third picture shows ice in the fun third pitch that was present two years ago--None of that ice was there this spring. It was just bare rock rock covered in dry powder.
On the upper pitches, which are more expossed to sun in some places, the climbing varied between patches of firm snow that had almost transformed into nieve (fun and safe to climb) and areas of dry snow surrounding large unbalanced rocks or piles of loose stones (definitely not fun and safe to climb!).
Parts of me wants to beleive that the snow that remains on the routes will slowly transform into neive and ice by this fall, but I don't think that will happen. I predict that it will be too warm during the day and not cold enough at night for alpine ice and nieve to form, and perhaps more importantly the whole base strata of the mountain, the matrix that holds everything together, just won't freeze.
What does this mean for climbing these routes? Well, it adds some technical difficulty, and it adds some objective danger, and it slows things down--you have to climb really carefully. We got up and down just fine, but the climb had that heightened tension that comes when the risk shifting into the maybe-this-is-too-much zone. Had I known conditions were so dry, I would simply have gone skiing or climbing in the valley (the powder looked great!).
That's all.
If anybody goes there in the coming months, I'd be super curious about conditions.
