Ekne ice clattering

On Saturday I went to a crag called Ekne with Gudmund and his partner Kirsten. Ekne is a crag with 3 main walls and literally hundreds of unexplored boulders of huge size, a partially developed climber's heaven. The aim was to try to climb a line that goes at UK 6c in the summer; now it was full of ice and looked like fun.

This picture is taken from the top of the Overveggan or Upper Wall. A spectacular location.

The route started with an ice covered ledge-which I'm stood on in the pic below-above head height with a niche above that. The hard moves came from trying to get out of the niche and established on the ice smear on the wall above it. An essential icicle gave front point placements that made this move 'possible' you can see it by my left shoulder.

Below you can see the highest point I got too. I had a really good placement for one axe. So good that when my feet and the other axe popped I couldn’t get it out and as my fingers uncurled I
let go, leaving it stuck in the smear!

Under our enthusiastic booting the important icicle rapidly got shorter and shorter until there was nothing left. As this coincided with pumped forearms we called it a day.