UKC

See this if you're in /heading to the Saas Grund / Weissmies area and weren't already aware:

http://www.1815.ch/news/wallis/aktuell/gletscherabsturz-bedroht-saas-grund/

G

In reply to deugar:

I think the bit that was threatening Saas Grund and which led to the evacuation of 200 inhabitants, fell down last night without doing any damage. Best confirm that, of course.

In reply to jon:

Keine Gefahr mehr in Saas-Grund:

http://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/keine-gefahr-mehr-in-saas-grund

Two-thirds of the dangerous ice fell down last night without causing damage, the residents may return to their houses.

In reply to deugar:

Yes - smaller than feared lump that came off. Looks to me from comparing my photos with those taken this morning in the media, that the debris pretty well covers the routes folks were using last week (when I saw an avalanche come down 20m or so from parties using a higher of two variants). Just something to be aware of perhaps given it's such a popular route...

In reply to deugar:

Just to illustrate, here are parties on the voie normale from Hohsaas on 27 August

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gilbertroberts/36310600264/in/dateposted-publ...

and here is a photo from today

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/part-of-swiss-glacier-breaks-off-after...

In reply to deugar:

some video here:

http://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/bevoelkerung-von-saas-grund-atmet-auf

In reply to rlrs:

I've always thought the voie normale of the Weissmies was one of the potentially most dangerous normal routes. However, it's always been the seracs further right that have worried me. I guess the lump that's just broken off did so due to the rock underneath it...

In reply to deugar:
That's a huge serac collapse. I was at Hosaas last month (climbing the Lagginhorn) and I thought at the time I'm glad I'd already done climbed the Weissmeis because the seracs looked pretty bad this year!

In reply to pec:


We did the Lagginhorn South Ridge in June and planned to do the Weissmies the next day. One guide and two other parties set out, but we didn't like the look of it at all. There was fresh snow as well and from the safety of Hohsaas we watched them all make very slow progress until the cable car started up.

In reply to deugar:

There's another English language report here with some shocking pics of how far the glacier has retreated.
http://www.planetski.eu/news/9499
It would also appear there is some regular hi-tech monitoring of this area in situ following previous serac collapses
https://www.geopraevent.ch/project/weissmies-glacier-velocities/?lang=en
this from the same source and has a good video of a previous collapse
https://www.geopraevent.ch/eislawine-am-weissmies/?lang=en
When I was bivvying at Hohsaas this summer there were regular bangs from small serac falls which sounded like something big had gone but were actually quite small, often too small to even see (as is often the case) so goodness knows how much noise it must have made when this one went!

In reply to pec:

>"There's another English language report here with some shocking pics of how far the glacier has retreated."
http://www.planetski.eu/news/9499

Is that the same Trift glacier?

In reply to JLS:

No, it's not, but never mind eh!

In reply to JLS:


Nope. That's the Triftgletscher in Bern... https://s.geo.admin.ch/759c28d3bf

There's another one near Fiesch as well.

In reply to JLS:




Closer inspection suggests possibly not in which case its a poor piece of journalism to include pictures of one Trift Glacier in an article about another Trift Glacier even if there is an obvious cause of confusion there.

In reply to pec:
You don't need you look too hard to find sh!t on the Internet.
It was the closed railway...and the lake...and the bridge that gave it away.
I strongly suspect the writer has never been to Saas Grund but that's no excuse if you are trying to pass yourself off as a journo.