Winter mountaineering is great and it really makes you appreciate Spring mountaineering even more (although there is less tea drinking potential in the Spring). Just the little things like not having to put your head torch on in the morning or if you get really lucky you may even get some sunshine!

I always think that reaching the top of a route leads to wanting to do about another 5 routes that you have seen during the ascent. I’d seen the classic  Upper Couloir II** on Stob Ghabar many years ago and caught my imagination. It certainly didn’t disappoint and provided a classic mountaineering day for myself Dizzy G, MG and dirty Dave! The approach is great and felt quite Scandinavian with frozen lakes and plenty of good neve on the steep approach slopes, which added extra atmosphere to the route and some great photo opportunities for the sponsors. 

It seems a shame to leave the summit on days like these, but actually we had some pretty important projects to attend to. We take our recovery very seriously and had to have a long ice bath session before the tea drinking could begin. I’d post a video of Dizzy G in the stream but it is too graphic and he wanted to use it for something else. On the note of water, we saw a lot of water droplets on Ben Nevis on Tuesday, which isn’t ideal when ice climbing...

Thankfully the summit of the Ben was the only thing sticking above the clouds of dampness, so we did the sensible thing and had a good sunbathing session whilst drying our gear out. Now this is why I go mountaineering!