Talk:Great north faces of the Alps

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Can someone update the article to explain the significance of *north* faces? It's probably obvious to mountaineers, but maybe not to others. 173.81.163.191 (talk) 05:27, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I immediately wondered the same thing - is it a geology/geography, or weather type thing, or just a coincidence? --81.149.74.231 (talk) 10:12, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I was about to ask the same question. Is it because you climb in shadows and it is colder? 128.141.24.184 (talk) 22:26, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the north face in the northern hemisphere, is always the coldest face, the face that's less sunny, the face which the sun touches late in the morning and quits soon in the afternoon, the face where you can have snow sometimes even during summer while it is very hot and sunny everywhere else in the valley and on the other faces of the mountain. Because they are the coldest, the north faces are the most difficult to climb, bivouacking on a north face climb is really something extreme, another (also extreme) alternative is to be able to ice-climb so fast you don't have to spend a night on the face. The good thing is they are also the ones which offer more time without rockfalls, because there is more time during which ice keeps rocks from falling. Akseli9 (talk) 23:42, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

And I forgot the obvious: Because of these climatic phenomenons involving ice melting cycles etc and providing different long-term erosion of the mountain, the north faces are also the steepest (and in southern hemisphere it's the south faces that are the steepest). Akseli9 (talk) 18:54, 24 August 2015 (UTC)