In reply to Simon4:
> In fact, from reports, it looked as if nothing much was possible in the Alps other than some glorious walking conditions.
Not really true to be honest, that huge dump of snow we had in November really did wonders up high, and it's been cold enough to look after the snow up there, to a point. What really suffered is snow in the 2000-3000m range (and lower, obviously), which meant that you just had to do a lot of walking to get to and from it, and a little bit of dry skiing to get over moraines and whatnot. This was enough to scare off an awful lot of people, which meant that the high mountains just weren't crowded, and you could really leave things to settle before thinking about going and skiing them.
Conditions, although quite dry in places, were for the most part cold, safe, and stable, and there have been people pushing the limits to a pretty impressive degree. A few new lines were put up in the Argentiere Basin over the last month, and one particularly gnarly dude skied the lower half of the north face of the Triolet. Personally, I've had some great days out skiing, and I managed to score some great snow weeks and weeks after the November storm, albeit with a bit of faff to get there. I have to say, if the price you need to pay to have such safe and uncrowded conditions up high is a bit of a plod across a blue glacier and a dusty moraine, then I'm happy to pay it.
And although ice climbing was pretty terrible a month ago, it's been growing steadily since then. I climbed at the Cremerie about two weeks ago and there were maybe a dozen people there, but for the last week there have been thirty or forty people a day there. Rive Gauche has seen a fair bit of action (including an awful lot of top roping), Rive Droit has had a few teams wander over there (results: long walk, fat enough, but very wet), and the Passon Icefalls (pictured above) are as fat as I've ever seen them, and seeing increasing traffic.
More and more good reports are coming in from Cogne and the other Italian valleys over the last two weeks, and the same for various spots in Switzerland.
So, it was slow to start, but things are really shaping up quite nicely now!
Post edited at 21:17