
Late on Friday night David arrived up from Derby which meant that I had a climbing partner keen to get on a grade V ice route, so we set our alarms for 4:30 with a plan on walking into the Ben and seeing what was in condition but hoping that Minus Two was still looking climbable. After four hours sleep we both felt pretty rough in the morning but after 1h30 of walking in drizzle reached the CIC hut, thankfully as we approached the hut the drizzle stopped and the conditions started to improve. After picking up some water we headed up to Observatory Gully and got our first closeup view of the Minus face and saw a very thin looking Minus Two, after a brief discussion we decided to carry on walking towards it to see if it looked any better. Minus One was looking fatter and had a team gearing up at the first belay, we decided that Minus Two looked climbable so went for it. After a quick game of rock, paper, scissors at the belay I took the first pitch and very feeling slightly nervous setting. Read the full article…