On the 11th and 12th February Simon McCabe, Steve Hall and I had a fantastic couple of days in the Cairngorms. It was destined to be a hard getting there as I was meant to be working at a Lake District Outdoor Centre and needed to get the days off and arrange child care. Well the forecast was good and Sticil Face, our objective, had been on the list for 15 years, so it was worth the effort!

We arrived at midnight on Wednesday night and slept in my van. An early start enabled us to locate a snow hole in Corrie Domhain and leave some of our kit. We then headed off in poor weather, but light winds to Loch Avon. The slope felt insecure and after much delay and discussion we scooted across the slope linking islands of safety to Cascade (V1,6). This would have been my first lead on ice of this grade but it was not to be, 10 feet from the angle easing my arms gave out. A bit of frantic ice screw placing and I lowered off. Simon top roped to the screws and led through well to the top, good lad!

A very pleasant night in the snow hole and another early start found us standing outside in early light and more fresh snow. We decided to go over the top of Hell's Lum and drop into the corrie from there. At 9.50am we were climbing Sticil Face. Steve led the first proper pitch, Simon the much photographed ice pitch and I led the mixed pitches. It is a fantastic route, the weather was awesome and we summited at about 4.30pm. 

We picked up our sleeping bags from the snow hole and at 7pm we were back at my van driving back to the Lakes. A brilliant trip!