Day 5 of my softshell week

The Runnel and Aladdin's Mirror Direct from Alan Halewood on Vimeo.

Plan A was to get Tom and Eoin to lead a whole route with climbing on it suitable to each of their levels of experience and then get them on something a little harder to finish off. So the beers they bought me last night were sweated out with an early start and a rapid walk in to give us the best chance of achieving our aim. The runnel was free and looked to have ice at the top. 4 pitches of leading for the guys with the top right hand groove holding nice ice to give Tom some interest and plenty of easier mileage lower down to reinforce the picture we have been painting of the climbing process for Eoin. Note: with the mild conditions its interesting how many well used cracks on the wall of the Runnel are actually reliant on completely loose blocks (there were 2 that I flagged up to Tom to not even breathe heavily on). We did however get a great 2 screw belay on the way up.
Down the Goat Track on soft snow and we chatted a few other folk at the rescue box before racing up to Aladdin's Mirror Direct to take advantage of a brief gap in the queue so the lads could experience some steeper ice. I thought my luck was in as I came over the top to find a BD Express Screw and extender in situ- unfortunately this turned out to belong to one of the chaps on the Guides Winter Test and he pinged me at the Lodge later to get it back. Oh well.
We still had 45 minutes left before we needed to leave the coire so we used the time constructively to look at snow anchors to round off the 5 day Intro to Winter Climbing course i've been working at Glenmore Lodge. Top weather, top effort from Eoin and Tom, top week!
2 more days Winter climbing with a client in the 'Gorms this weekend. See you in the 'people's coire'!