The route is a non-line that shows the brilliant mountaineering skill of its first ascensionists. It links natural features that are not obvious from the bottom in a devious line that makes perfect sense once you’re on it. The pitches flow together with sustained climbing that is always delicate but never hard. Despite not having an obvious line like its neighbour Point Five Gully, it has an aesthetic all to itself.

Take 60m ropes and enough ice screws for successive ice screw belays. One set of rocks is plenty because nearly all the protection is in ice. The second pitch is surprisingly steep and can provide the steepest section of the whole climb. The traverse out of The Basin will always be the crux though, psychologically if not physically. It’s a delicate tip-toe rightwards over ever more exposed blobs of ice. Above, seemingly endless grooves of ice and sheets of snow lead to a final rocky buttress, breached on the left by the Exit Chimney, a last sting in the tail.

Every time I climb Orion Direct, I tell the people I’m with about Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith’s first ascent in 1960 with one ice axe each and a single rope. This was at the end of a week of climbing now passed into legend, and which marks the pinnacle of the old step cutting era. Marshall and Smith climbed a new route at the highest technical standard of that period every day for six days, before taking a day off. This they spent walking over Carn Mor Dearg, Aonach Beag and the Grey Coires to Spean Bridge.

Orion Direct was their last climb of the week. Just imagine setting off up this 400m-high face of ice and rock knowing that the only way off was to reach the top! Thankfully our modern equipment and guidebooks make the climb a little more accessible and less serious than it was back then. However, it will never lose any of its impact on those who climb it.