After seeing some brilliant photos and hearing great reports of this route I did some last minute texting and met up with Andy for an evening of roadside ice climbing. We left Edinburgh at 2pm and it felt quite strange driving south with the car full of winter gear! After some tricky roads which we were grateful to have 4 wheel drive on, we arrived at the carpark to see two parties walking off, one party finishing the route and another who had just finished. By the time we made the short walk to the base of the route we had the place to ourselves and I set off up the first pitch. This gave some brilliant climbing, particularly through a short steep section which was amazing, on solid water ice taking good screws. At the top of the first pitch I built a solid screw belay and brought Andy up as the light failed, at this point we saw a party of three also walking in to climb the route.
Andy led the second pitch which began steeply but then eased off as we climbed into a pond bay under headtorch and the light of the stars.
This was exited by an easy line on the right, there may be a more direct and steeper finish but there was a lot of running water behind it and everyone else had gone right, into another pond bay. We escaped right after this onto the descent path as the top pitch is apparantly not worthwhile. The route was deservedly popular; absolutely fantastic and very atmospheric under the light of the stars.
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