Ice is nice, even when it’s a bit melty

So here’s a top tip for any budding ice climbers out there: if you’re soloing an icefall using walking poles instead of ice tools then the chances are that you’re probably not on the right route.

Turns out we weren’t, so we went jungle bashing until we found our target of 350m of nice (apart from a bit melty) water ice in the form of a big massive frozen waterfall down a gully.

Turns out too that climbing ice when you’ve not climbed ice for ages is dead hard. Hopefully tomorrow it’ll all feel natural again!

Anyway. Amazing views of the Italian Alps (you’ll have to trust me on this as I could only post 1 pic and I went for the action(ish) shot)

That’ll be all.