It's An Ice, Ice, Master Class, Baby...

Winter climbing conditions may be horribly unstable in Scotland right now, but at the Ellis Brigham ice wall in Covent Garden, it's always winter - a bit like Narnia, but more technical.

Wicked ice queen for the morning was Darren Christie, aka 'Weird Darrren', who front-pointed in at the last moment as a substitute for the winner of our Mountain Hardwear Ice-Climbing Masterclass competition. Unfortunately we couldn't track down the original winner, but every cloud has a silvery lining.

Togged out in the latest Mountain Hardwear kit, our Darren (right) was introduced to the steep white stuff in the heart of London by two of Britain's leading climbers, Tim Emmett (left) and Neil Gresham and is now totally bitten by the joys of vertical water ice:

'It was just totally amazing, and I want to go again!!! Arms hurt a bit, but in a good way?'

Darren's forum tag is now, erm, Vanilla Ice. Our man Jonathan Pritchard was there representing OM and took some pics of our Darren in actiion. Poor old Jonathan was all geared up and ready to climb himself, when a paying customer showed up and bumped him out of contention. Never mind, I'm sure the London ice falls will be in nick soon enough....

Anyway, here are a couple of Eagle-Eye Pritchard shots of Darrrn in freeze frame action, plus Mr Emmett being masterful :-)