Hi,

I will be staying around Zinal from june 20th - july 6th. We plan to do some ridges.

If anybody has recent information about current conditions of ridges on any of the following mountains or neighbouring mountains, it would be more than welcome:
- Besso;
- Grand Cornier;
- Zinalrothorn;
- Weisshorn;

If you have 'must-do's' in the AD/D range in that area, please share (preferably ridges/rock).

tnx
Koen

Imposable to say at this time. This is very early for these ridges so expect snow on all of them.

I would go for the

Besso's south west ridge to start

http://www.summitpost.org/route/160660/ ... ridge.html

It is very similar in flavour to the north Ridge of the Zinal-Rothorn

http://www.summitpost.org/route/156190/north-ridge.html

which is the real gem of the valley

especially the Razor



good rock easy climbing and 1000+m or exposure. Can't beat that.

The Weisshorn is better approached from the Matter side but from Zinal there is the route from the Schali bivouac http://www.summitpost.org/route/156098/schali.html the South ridge which is nice but very committing and getting to the bivouac is usually the hardest part of the climb.

The problem with the Weisshorn is snow this time of year it is usually badly out of condition and the Hut will not have a warden.


It goes without saying that even a little snow-storm a day or so before you go will put these ridges out of shape very quickly.

Hey Koen,

Not as spectacular as the Rothorn and the other higher mountains in Zinal but very good for a first practice route to get acclimatized: the Aiguilles de les Les or, just on the opposite side of the valley, the Couronne de Breona. Both are short (3 hours or so?) AD ridge climbs that are easily accesed from the car park near the Moiry glacier.
Unfortunately there is no info on them on summitpost yet (might write a page on them sometime!) but look in the SAC guidebook for all the info you need.

groeten!

Bart

@ J: That's more or less our plan, Besso as a sort of 'training' for the Zinalrothorn. All depending on conditions of course. Thanks for your help and the links. Hopefully I'll be able to add some pics to your page
@ B: We plan to do some acclimatizing and glaciertraining around the Moiry first. Last year I was on the pigne de la lé with some non-climbing friends - I will surely look into the options you've mentioned. Even Grand Cornier (north ridge) is a possibility. BTW: nice action pictures! Plannen voor dit jaar?

Cheers
Koen

lots of new snow today: http://bergbahnen.zermatt.ch/d/web-cam/zermatt4.html

Thank you Moni,

weather has been unstable for a while now and there's more of the same forecasted for this week as well... We're leaving for there tomorrow, but it looks like we won't be doing anything too engaging this week...

I've also been using this cam to keep an eye on conditions around Zinal.

Cheers
Koen