UKC

Anyone been on Marmolada recently? if so how much snow and ice on the Vf's, at the moment? Will i need big boots and crampons, or can i manage in summer boots?

In reply to Fiskavaig:
Don't know about this year, but you'll probably need them if you plan to descend the glacier on the north side.
We did this last year after doing the VF on the west ridge. Crampons were quite handy for the approach and for the last icy bit on the descent.

In reply to richparry: Cheers, anyone been up in the last few weeks?

In reply to Fiskavaig:

Hi Fella,

Been up it last week, rock is dry, starting to get icy on the glacier. The guides are guiding it.

In reply to GirlieEyes:

On June 16th, it was a little wet on the Don Quixote and a lot of wet on the other routes. On the descent there was at least 30cm of snow.

We had ultra light running shoes and nothing else. I quess it could be a bit slippery if the glacier was dry. Short trip report here:
http://www.patagonia.fi

In reply to adnix: Great trip report, thanks. Also thinking about doing Do Quixote, I take it you parked up then walked straight in to do the route without using the hut, what time did you set off?
Regards,
Jon

In reply to jshields:

I checked the timestamps on my photos. Timewise it went more or less like this:

14:20 Left the office in Finland
16:05 Boarded the airplane
19:00 Arrived at Milan Malpensa and started driving
23:30 Stopped for a bivy beside the road.
5:30 Woke up and continued driving (6 hours of sleep)
6:30 Took some pics of the descent route near the lake

7:30 Started the approach from the parking
8:45 Took some pics at the Falier Hut
9:45 Arrived to the base of route and ate some sandwiches
10:15 Started climbing
14:00 Arrived to the mid ledges and changed the leading block.
(we did some "extended" pitches but no proper simulclimbing)
17:30 At the bottom of the crux pitches
20:10 Topped the route - enjoyed the view!

20:40 Started the abseils (two of them with 50m twins, towards the lake - would have been ok with a 50m single if you leave a couple of slings)
22:10 Arrived to the road
23:15 Hitch hiked a car (saved probably one hour of hiking)
23:30 Back at the car

The rack we had was one set of stoppers, Cams C3 #1 & #2 and C4 #0.3 to #2. We had 50m twin ropes, 15 quickdraws, one CamelBak each, 0,5 litre extra water bottle for the approach, some candy for food. Clothing: a Merino T-shirt, thin fleece, a 100g running wind jacket, wind stopper gloves a fleece hat and ultra light trail running shoes.

After this trip I've bought a set of small dyneema tricams but I'm not sure if they would have helped. A couple of hooks for protection would have been nice. The pitch after the crux was fairly runout.