Brian was doing a great job. I was feeling pretty guilty about not leading (I had figured this would be a good route to try) and sharing the burden, but the sketchiness of the ice and our difficulties in finding good belays and reasonable screw placements was bugging me out. At this point we'd already had two screws freeze solid, and we'd been very vigilant about cleaning them out as soon as we removed them from the ice. The two that froze stopped up on lead in poor placements that had to be removed.

Brian: If you look closely, you can see a vague sense of discomfort.

Mike came up in good form and I started to pass the rack back to him. He said he didn't feel comfortable leading. I was a little surprised, yet not really. Mike is technically ready (at least on ice) but his head isn't into it yet. I was going to be on the fun end of the rope all day and this turn of events was just fine by me (or so I thought).

My head's into it, all right. It's just the "make the head move the body" thing I'm working on.