Harder than it looked

Today we revisited the west side of the fjord to look at one of the lines we'd seen on Wednesday. The southern half of the fjord had seen less snow but as we drove north it was deeper on the ground. As we parked more snow started falling, quite heavily. Faced with driving back and sitting around the cabin for another day we put on the snowshoes and walked northwards past our Wednesday climb.

After a slog upwards through deep snow we reached the base of the climb.

I led the first pitch which turned out to be steeper than it had looked, and the ice wasn't great for security of protection. So I gibbered and swore my way up, while Nick tried to keep warm on the belay. At the top the ice gave way to deep snow so I dug a deep snow belay and brought Nick up.

From where we were the rest of the climb looked short and quite easy. Here's Nick wading up to it through deep snow and almost losing the will to carry on:

The final pitch turned out to be 60m in length (it had looked half that) with a hard vertical top section. Here's Nick towards the top.

As we got towards the top the weather cleared, giving us good views across to the fjord.