Not really a day for hanging around, so B and I had a mountaineering sort of day. We headed up through the left hand break in the slabby ground between Aladdin’s Mirror and Central Left-Hand. We then made a rising rightwards traverse to join Central Left-Hand then dropped off the rib itself to gain the short, but good ice pitch on the left hand side of the narrows of the funnel shaped gully right of Pygmy Ridge. This gave 6 or 7 pitches of about I/II and a good day out given the conditions.
Snow was firm throughout the route with no cornice problems with the exit. The ice was good and the small areas of turf encountered were well frozen.
Wind was North Westerly and gusting circa 40mph. Showery precipitation most of the day, initially as snow, but rain by the time we’d headed around to pt. 1141m. Some fresh wet snow deposits on South through East slopes. The crags (notably Pygmy Ridge area) were riming during the day, but the rain may have stripped this.
