The Shield Direct

Blair climbing up to my belay (Keith Ball)

Unfortunately John couldn't make his second day, but every cloud has a silver lining.  I knew Blair was looking for a partner and as the Shield Direct was in, I was happy I had a day off.  There was no discussion about what we would climb, we both were super keen to do this.  We opted for an early start and were almost pushed back to the car because of the winds.  We persevered and we were rewarded with 6 pitches of brilliant VII,7 climbing.  Blair won the rock, paper, scissor duel, so he went first and climbed the nice ice pitch, which is becoming thinner as climbers keep hacking away.  Above the ice pirch we were greeted with great icy mixed climbing up a fantastic feature on Ben Nevis.  Nice long pitches too.  This route has true classic status and is rightly deserved.  It was great to be out climbing today as it does feel like I haven't done a great deal of personal climbing this winter and to catch a rare day off on such an amazing route is the icing on the cake.  Sadly Blair and I didn't take a camera so have no pics but thanks to Keith who was on Gemini with Dave, he sent me some really poor quality shots.  (Its ok, he knows I'm grateful and he doesn't read this blog so he wont know I said this! ;)