Les Drus is the most impressive granite monolith overlooking the Chamonix Valley. Often you will catch a glance of the intimidating, dark rock peak from the opposite sunny side of the valley, and its a wonder that this face would be so alluring. This winter in Chamonix has been unusually dry, the mountains are devoid of ice, every new snow fall brings dry snow that fattens the ski-fields, but blows off the steep mountain faces. So instead of lamenting it, we embraced it, and set about blunting our tools and crampons on 850m of granite dry tooling up the North Face of the Petit Dru.

The South Face of Mt Hutton (2820m) at the head of the Cass Valley in Tekapo received its first ascent on Sunday 26th August 2018 by three members of the New Zealand Alpine Team, Caleb Jennings, Rose Pearson and Alastair McDowell. Both the ascent and descent was illuminated by a full moon, casting a huge shadow across the face as they approached, and making headlamps unnecessary on the descent as the Southern Alps glowing around them, so they named the route 'Moonshadow' (MC 5+, 500m).