Good Friday climb

I was out on the Ben Yesterday on a guided climbing day for hughes mountaineering. After meeting Ronan and finding out a bit about what he had already done we decided to go and have a look at good friday climb up on the indicator wall. There isn’t a great deal of stuff left on the Ben, but I had heard this had been climbed a day or two before, its also pretty high so seemed like it should be a good option. We bumped into a few teams who were heading up towards tower scoop, this seemed to be a popular choice, as we headed up onto our route the queues below it were continually growing and growing, yet we had our route completely to ourselves!! The route itself can be quite awkward to access as it involves a traverse under the indicator wall in quite an exposed position, to avoid this we pitched up through some broken ground below to give us a relatively straight path up to our climb, it also gave us two extra pitches on ice and snow. When we made it onto the route we found it to actually be in pretty good condition, the crux is moving through an icy ramp, which was quite thin and a bit detached at the bottom, but much better once you moved up, it also had the added security of rock gear!
As we approached the top the skies began to clear and we had the rare treat of enjoying the views from the summit. A great day out on the hill the with great company, and good to get a nice route done, considering the conditions on the hill.

Ronan moving up the first pitch

Approaching the belay, after the crux pitch

Close to the top as the weather clears

Mandatory summit pose!