UKC

Hello all,

Does anyone have any information about conditions and particularly if the initial couloir is crossable/crevassed?

You could check the "Alpine Club Chamonix conditions" webpage.

My understanding is that the Forbes has been gone since the end of July. There are no logged ascents on here since the 19th of July.

There's been a huge dump of snow around Chamonix which you may have to take into account.

alpine conditions in chamonix are long over...go climb some rock

Why someone disliked your accurate post is beyond me!!!

hopefully they are disliking the sad state of the mountains?

It wasn't me, but your post did re-emphasise the absurd position held by many British climbers that the Alps is Chamonix. Most of the best alpine mountains are not around Chamonix. In the last week I did the trverses of the Breithorn and Ober Gabelhorn.

You are only limited to rock climbing if you are only limited to Chamonix.

Have a look on camp2camp. Someone has posted a route report for the Forbes a couple of days ago. They completed it from the Trient side, and said the route was ok but the glacier for the descent was a nightmare.

excuse you? his post was specifically about Argentiere, i.e. chamonix!

Yes, but there's still the (to some unthinkable) option of going somewhere else.  It's not the first time that discussions about the conditions in Chamonix are extrapolated to the whole of the Alps.  I suspect what you genuinely meant was that if the mountaineering routes around Chamonix are out then you have only two options: rock climb in Chamonix or go home.  And that mountaineering somewhere else in the Alps simply isn't an option.

And, there are lots of threads on here where that is the logic: things were bad round Cham, so we came home.  I know people who have done that - spend a week in Cham in bad weather and come home early, while elsewhere in the Alps (be it Italy, Switzerland or the Ecrins) conditions are good.

I was in touch with someone recently who simply wouldn't countenance leaving the Chamonix area.  He'd rather go home than climb elsewhere.