Ming fest on the Ben!

Headed up to the Ben yesterday with Mikey and Mark, forecast was looking slighty better than the last few days, with a lower freezing level, although it was set to rise throughout the day with increasing wind and precipitation meaning an earlier start was on the cards. 6.30am and we were on our way round to the northface car park for the dreaded walk up through the forest. As we headed up things were looking rather murky, there was some fresh snow being put down higher up, but it was raining down were we where, its never a good feeling to be getting wet on the approach, thankfully the rain eased and eventually stopped….for the time being!
We headed up into Coire na Ciste, where visiblity was pretty low, we bumped into a few people heading in the same direction, and could hear lots of voices so it seemed like quite a few people add opted for an early start. The aim was to get onto some ice, as neither Mikey or Mark had done much on ice before, and were keen to get to grips with ice technique, and using ice screws. Everyone else in the coire seemed to be heading in the direction of the comb and number 3 buttress, so we decided to get away from the crowds and headed for central gully, a fantastic little ice route with good rock runners and belays. The ice was great, first time axe placements and lots of scope for placing screws, so it was prefect for what we were looking to do. We climbed the route in 3 pitches and topped out onto a rather windy plateau, the weather was starting to close in! We descended number 4 gully and dropped down out of the snow, and into the rain. It was deffinately a day for testing waterprrofs to the limit, and mine failed..miserabley, we arrived back at the car park, psyched to have done a good route on a pretty grime day, but soaked to the skin!


Mikey and Mark hangin out at the 1st belay, Mikey is in the somewhere….under all those jackets!  Arriving at the 2nd belay

Taking the climbing gear of in the pouring rain, Mikey is trying his best to smile!