Cham Conditions?

[Max Buchsbaum]

A friend and I are trying to plan a trip to Cham, but we’re having trouble finding anything about typical conditions. We’d be hoping to do big ice/mixed north face routes, with Colton-Macyntire  as the main goal. 

We’re limited to a week or so sometime before December because that’s when my partner can get us free flights.

Hoping someone on here has spent enough time over there to have a sense of when conditions are typically good.

[keenwesh]

I’m not an expert, I’ve only climbed there one winter, but in February all the major ice routes were dry, and those in the know said that the big lines don’t typically form until later in the season. 
 

Don’t trust me 100%, but I would guess there’s not much ice up high in December. That February trip I ended up climbing the Frendo spur, which was awesome. We climbed other shorter mixed routes off the valley Blanche, but yeah super couloir was dry, Les droites was dry, it was all dry.

Edited August 8 by keenwesh

[bedellympian]

Check Jeff and Priti Wright's TRs from when they did the 6 north faces... I think they mentioned using Instagram hashtag searches to see if people were doing the routes and what they looked like. I'm sure they had some other beta in there too. Those TRs are dense.