Royal Pardon and Stand and Deliver

First pitch of Royal Pardon

Paul making his way up to the belay

Amazing crux section complete

heading up to the crux of Stand and Deliver

Don't swing too hard

Doesn't get much better than this!

Psyched

It doesn't get much better than this.  Blue skies, no wind, ace company, sticky ice and bone dry!  Paul and I got the early gondola at Aonach Mor and made the brief walk over to the col below Aonoch Beag in strong sunlight.  We had several teams in our wake, Blair and Nona heading for Kings Ransom, Rich and his client heading for Royal Pardon as well as another team who backed off it yesterday.  Fortunately we were at the base of Royal Pardon (VI,5) first and were rewarded with perfect, first time placements and sticky ice.  It truly was a dream to climb.  A tense game of rock, paper, scissors meant I got the crux pitch which was brilliant.  We were fairly swift up the route, topping out at 12.30 so after a nice lunch break in the sun and a chat with Matt Pycroft (who was filming Andy Cave on Stand and Deliver) we went back in for another route.  Stand and Deliver (V,5) looked amazing so we fired in a couple of ice screws and we were ready to go.  Paul got the crux pitch on this which was hard.  Steep and hollow sounding but the ice was still fantastic.  Paul dispatched quickly, not surprising after his long run of ice routes over the last 3 weeks.  I finding it really hard to decide which has been the best day of the season for me, they just seem to be getting better and better!