UKH

Anyone been on the North Face in the last 5 days? What are conditions like?
Thinking about heading up one of the Ridges on Saturday and trying to work out gear choice!

In reply to upupup:

not been up in a couple of weeks but castle ridge has been completely snow free for a while, ledge route may still have unnavoidable snow, particularly on the final ridge crest. Tower ridge is almost certainly still wintery in the upper third and probably has patches lower down. NE butress might have the odd patch of old snow and of course will top out on the plateau snow field which is still over 2m deep! many rock routes elsewhere will require substantial snow approaches as the great gullies/upper corries are still stacked with snow.

plus bear in mind there might be a fair build up of fresh snow above 1000m by the weekend as its been snowing all week!

if your after winter i suspect smiths/hadrians/indicator/comb/green gully may all still be climable.

In reply to Webster:
Pretty wintery up there still. Tower Scoop and Smiths look very good. Indicator looks ok. Tower Ridge has a track up it now, we put crampons on in the bottom of Observatory Gully.

Some photos here
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.699673916825867.1073741889.245638...

In reply to highclimbingguy:

I saw pics today of a foot of fresh snow, with same again promised today.
Winter doesn't want to let go this year.

In reply to upupup:
Fresh ice was forming high up on the faces this weekend.
Some pictures here including one looking across to Orion and upper Observatory routes from ledge route.
http://www.mountainmotion.co.uk/blog/winter-mountaineering-ben-nevis-june/

In reply to Removed UserRichard Bentley:

Point 5 was looking perfectly climbable yesterday. Has it ever been climbed in June before I wonder?

In reply to Jamie Hageman:

Had an interesting chat with a well known custodian who knows Ben Nevis better than probably anyone. We are struggling to think when decent ice was hanging around this late. Folk talk about the double of point 5 and Centurion, usually in May sometime, How about Smiths and Centurion on mid summers day!
Unfortunately, (or not, its about time summer started), it looks set to warm up next week.
Still, just another three months and October will be here and there might be some early season mixed!

In reply to Removed UserRichard Bentley:

Hi Richard,

http://www.mwis.org.uk/scottish-forecast.asp?fa=EH&d=2015-06-07

There's been regular snow here in the Cairngorms over the last couple of months and given the forecast for this weekend, I'm not sure whether this will be late season mixed 2014/15 or early season mixed 2015/16 !!!! I saw Red Breast last week and he also told me it was likely the longest season he'd known....
Have fun....
ANdy

In reply to upupup:

I was up today. Smiths route would still be climbable given a slight re-freeze, Tower scoop was in decent nick. The big gullies are all fine with fairly stable looking cornices.