Ledge Route

Rob high on Ledge Route ***, on Carn Dearg Buttress

Today I ws working for Abacus Mountaineering with Rob on Ledge Route. He said it was a life time ambition to do the route. It was his last hard scramble to do, and the last big tick on his list. He's already done all the peaks in the Lakes and over half of the Munros. We had a great day for it - not too hot, no rain, and I only saw a few midges (and they were in Fort William!). Rob's mountaineering hobby contrasts with his other passion, which is chess - he's been the British Chess Champion twice.

Rob clearly loving the climb, even though the views stayed obscured

The hardest part of my day was cutting all those steps in the snow at the beginning of Number 5 gully (I did wish we had crampons on!). The snow was too hard to kick steps into - even with my old evos. The best bit of my day was seeing how happy Rob was to have done Ledge Route.

2 climbers who must have started fairly early on Torro

I got a little sidetracked watching the team on Torro.