Zinalrothorn & Besso

Zinalrothorn Nordgrat (4221 m)
Location	Zinal, Wallis
Date of the climb	August 14, 2016
Character	high-altitude alpine ridge climb
Popularity	average to high
Difficulty	AD, III
Height gain	~1400 (total) m height gain
Conditions	perfect, dry rock, stable weather, a bit warm
Protection	bolds on difficult parts of the ridge & for abseil. Beside that the ridge is clean, but can be protected easily without additional gear.
Material	a 40 m rope is just sufficient to abseil all parts + 2 (small) friends (i.e. violett and green) + glacier protection
Remarks	very impressive climb, mostly easy, with some extremely exposed sections. The so called rasoir is a bit polished and felt a bit harder than a III. I would grade it to IV- or at least III+.

Besso SW-Grat (3668 m)
Location	Zinal, Wallis
Date of the climb	August 13, 2016
Character	high-altitude alpine ridge climb
Popularity	average
Difficulty	AD, III+
Height gain	~1000 (total) m height gain
Conditions	perfect, dry rock, stable weather, a bit warm
Protection	a few bolds on difficult parts of the ridge
Material	30 m rope is sufficient for the climb + 2 (small) friends (i.e. violett and green).
Remarks	Great climb not only for acclimatization. We took the so called „Damenweg“ for the descent, which is a bit tricky, with loose rocks and exposed parts. It could even make sense to place additional pitons to abseil the very loose parts (we found one piton to abseil).