March 12, 2020 • 56 mins
A few decades ago, some people who liked to climb mountains decided they wanted to make it even harder and ice climbing was born. If you think rock climbing is difficult, put on your base layer and join Josh and Chuck on the glacier.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, people in Vancouver and Portland's we're coming to see you,
uh in March. Okay, did I step on you? No? No,
I stepped on you, I think. Man. All right, well
this is as clunky as we usually are. Uh, we
are going to be coming to those two fair cities
that I learned don't have direct flights yesterday and I
(00:20):
can't wait regardless, So we're gonna be in Vancouver on Sunday,
March twenty nine at the Chance Center. That's right. We're
kicking it up a notch there, so we need your support, yeah,
for real. And then the next day we're really kicking
it up a notch maybe two. In Portland. We're gonna
be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March that's right,
and we need your support there to Portland because uh again,
(00:42):
these are bigger venues. We're giving it a whorld. Don't
don't put egg on our faces for God's sake. Yeah. Yeah,
So you could get all sorts of information, you can
buy tickets, everything you need to go to s Y
s K live dot com and we'll see you in March.
Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of I
Heart Radios. How stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:09):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there,
and there's Jerry Um abominable snowman rolling, sorry, abominable snow
person rolling. I think she's more of a Burger meister,
Meister Burger, Do you think so? Yeah? I guess you're
absolutely right, Chuck. Who would be the abominable snowman of
(01:31):
the three of us? I think clearly me. Do you
think so, I'm the most horrific? Yes? But your um,
your attitudes, your general view on life is very much
not like that abominable snowman. Well, I'm fairly likable too.
I'm sort of like the Harry and the Henderson's big
(01:51):
foot that's right, scary looking but soft on the inside. Okay,
so then Jerry's John Lithgow and I'm one of the
trees in a scene. Okay, what was John liftgo? But
I missed that Harry and the Henderson, So I just
got confused. I do remember him being hearing the Henderson's
(02:13):
But because of what we're talking about today, I thought
you were making a reference to the Stallone. Uh what
was that movie where he was like a climber. It
wasn't No, that was the troll to movie face off.
I don't remember. I know what you're talking about. But
wasn't John liftgaw in that I think so. But actually
(02:34):
the big twist to all this is I wasn't making
it Harry and the Henderson's reference. I was making a
raising Caine reference. Oh good lord, this is all the rails. Cliffhanger, right, cliffhanger.
That's right, that's right, yeah, yeah yeah, and John Lull
was in it boom yeah. And it was stillone yeah,
you know, from the master filmmaker, Rennie Harlan. I like
(02:56):
Renny Harlan. I don't care what anybody says. I saw
The Long Kiss good Night finally that that's been on
your list for twelve years. World class movie starting at
about this halfway mark. Okay, all right, So we're talking
ice climbing today, and I guess I should probably start
by asking just verifying, Um, no, I haven't have you
(03:19):
ever seen I uh, I have seen ice, I've never
ice climbed. And you know, another funny little thing is
I don't know if you notice that my friend Debbie
Ranka wrote this from the old House Notice Yep, that's
quality stuff. She puts out the good stuff. Well she does.
She did a great job researching. But it's just funny
(03:41):
knowing Debbie. She is uh about as far away you
can get from someone who might ice climb. But wasn't
she into Roller Derby's sure? Okay, So I mean so
there's a sense of adventure. Yeah, but I was surprised
she did roller Derby. Uh, okay, I got you. So
(04:02):
it's a surprise you to roller River. Yeah, there's no
way she's gonna ice climb, even she doesn't like the
cold weather, so nothing about it, even from what I
can understand from ice climbing, I mean, we're far from experts.
We just did some research on ice climbing for ice
climb before. I haven't either. Um, and we'll probably get
some stuff from but please be forgiving. We're trying our
best here. But um, from what I can tell, even
(04:24):
rock climbers don't typically ice climb. They are a very
niche cadre. I think if you're an ice climber, you
started I was a rock climber. But just because your
rock climber does not automatically mean you can you can
be an ice climber there. They seem similar at first,
but when you really start to dig in, the nuance
between the two is pretty significant when you're out there
(04:45):
on the face of a glacier. Yeah, and I also
think that, um, there are plenty of rock climbers who
just want to go like shirt off or tank top
and shorts and not. Yeah, because part of ice climbing
is it's really cold. Yeah, it's a it's cold, it's
(05:06):
equipment heavy. Yeah, there's a lot, there's just a there's
a lot of differences. We'll go over some of the
differences as they pop up, but just suffice to say
that if you're familiar with rock climbing, that doesn't automatically
mean you're gonna be familiar with ice climbing. No, And
I don't think you need to sweat get in details
wrong because there's probably like a six ice climbers Max
who might listen to this show. Yeah, Oh, I think
(05:27):
that's a generous number. Have you seen the Free Solo
documentary yet? No? I haven't didn't it. It was either
up for an oscar at one and I think it
won a couple of years ago. Yeah, No, I haven't
seen it, really, really, really good. I'm sure I would
faint they just watching it. You know, it's pretty tense.
Although I will say this, Chuck. On the other day,
I was on a flight and um, everything just kept
(05:51):
bottoming out. We ran into some terrible weather and I
was just like filing my nails like it was nothing.
That's why you have to like tend leading in front
of me. They ache because I file them too too deeply.
All right, ice climbing, Okay, so your story, Yeah, that
was it. I just thought you'd appreciate that. Afraid of flying,
(06:14):
I was, you know, talking about heights and all that. Sure,
so there is talking about um, what was it called free,
free solo? What's the name of the documentary? So that
actually applies also kind of to ice climbing, as we'll
see later. So there are some some similarities, but there's
also some big differences. But ice climbing really more than
anything evolved out of mountaineering, because when you're climbing an
(06:37):
alpine mountain or a mountain that's really at a really
high altitude, it's not all just like green grass and
the von Trapp family and you know, birds singing in
your ear. It gets really cold up there. There's a
lot of snow, there's a lot of ice, and you
are going to eventually face a point where either you
have to turn back around and go back down and say, well,
(06:58):
I'm not gonna summit this mountain, or you have to
figure how to climb ice. And some of the earliest
mountaineers had some real trouble with this. And it wasn't
until a guy named Oscar um Ekenstein, right probably thank you,
very very nice, Um invented something called crampons that really
(07:19):
um change the game. I guess. Yeah. These are those
super cool looking, uh toothed claws that you originally you
would just strap them to your boots. They're like, you know,
super sharp cleats basically that you could strap to your boots.
You can still strap them to your boots, but you
can also get boots. And of course that I'm gonna
(07:40):
kind of pepper this with what I would do that
was a nice climber. I would get the built ins um,
but you can still go by the ones you strap
on as well. I have to say, that's all I
saw were the strap on ones. Really, I think they
have them built in now. I looked, I couldn't find him.
I saw some reference to him, but it looked more
(08:00):
like like actual cleats where it's like a crampon. Okay,
maybe that's it's different then. Also, I really hope I'm
pronouncing that correctly. Is a crampon? I think so. So,
you know, if you're a mountaineering couple and you need
to be very sweet, if your wife asked you to
go buy a box of crampons, right, you got to
do that. So when you you know there, they are
(08:21):
cleat like in in you know, design, But when you
really get down to it, I mean, the teeth on
those things are really long and really sharp, and they
have to be because you have to dig into some
serious stuff, some really hard ice with them. So from
what I saw, the everything I came across was all
like the strap on crampons. Strap strap on crampon. Right,
(08:44):
I love it. So when Oscar Etkenstein, I'm sorry, Ekenstein
invented the crampons. Um he was a mountaineer. He was
an early proponent of what's called bouldering, which is basically
climbing up over big rocks free solo wing. It's kind
of even even lighter gear than rock climbing. And this
guy was doing this at the turn of the last century.
(09:05):
He was actually friends with Alistair Crowley too, it turns
out who wasn't interesting cat though. So um Oscar oscar
Etkenstein just changed everything with these crampons, because suddenly you
could walk through um a walk on a glacier at
a certain amount of a grade. And it just kind
of was the first big step, and it was a
(09:26):
very big step toward this um this sport extreme sport
of ice climbing. Yeah, and I think, um, I don't
think we mentioned did we that? Before this? You could
still do that, but it would take a long long
time because you would have to literally it's called step cutting.
You would have to cut your steps into the ice
um as you go, instead of just having these death boots.
(09:48):
That's a better name for him. Could you imagine getting
kicked with one of those, No, you would just bleed out.
Surely that's been done in a movie, probably in Cliffhanger. Yeah,
death by crampon. Surely there is no way that doesn't
happen Cliffhanger. Maybe that's how John lythgo goes down. I
don't I didn't see Cliffhanger. Is it ice or is
it just Mountain. I think it's both because I remember
(10:09):
on the movie poster it's like Stallone hanging by one
hand from like a Rocky Craig, but he's wearing like
a north Face jacket. So I'm thinking it's a little
bit of both. Alright, mixed climbing, I think is what
they call it. Well, you know Stallone, he likes to
mix it up. He definitely does so. History wise, things advanced,
as they do with all sports. And about five years later,
(10:33):
twenty years later, there was a climber named Laurent Grivelle
who these first crampons were just sort of on the
bottom like cleats. He said, hey, you know what these
things need. They need fangs coming out of the toe,
out of the front, like those cowboy boots, to have
like a switchblade. Totally. You know, I think Roadhouse had
(10:56):
some of those who I'm not mistaken, probably because Cliffhang.
There's one point where I think it's Sam Elliott and
a bar fight says right boot, and there's just a
knife in this guy's boot. Sam Ellie is so helpful, man,
he really is, right boot. That was just a quote
(11:18):
my old friend, uh, my dear departed friend, Billy used
to say in college. Right, that's a good quote. So
the fangs coming out of the front really change things
because now they're like, hey, not only can we walk
up fairly steep slopes, but we can get near vertical
with this stuff, because we can just kick our toes
right into this and just climb. And I don't know
(11:41):
if you said it or not, but um uh was
it Lauren Grivel? No, I'm sorry, I von Schwinard. No,
we've just gotten to him in the nineteen sixties, the
swinging sixties. So um, with that, with that cramp on,
with the thing that comes out of the front. I've
seen it called a point. I've seen it called fangs,
but it can be like one point or two points,
(12:02):
and they have kind of like their ups and downs.
We'll talk about them a little bit later. But now
finally you start to get to what most people think
of ice climbing, because we should say, um, it took
me a little while to understand just walking basically up
a very gentle slope in in the mountains over ice
is really difficult to do, and that that qualifies as
(12:25):
ice climbing. That's like a certain grade of an ice climb.
Um what most people think of, if they've ever heard
of ice climbing, is somebody climbing up the sheer face
of a glacier with those cool looking death right. And
those are both two different types of what are called climbs.
Climbing straight up as a climb, climbing at an angle
(12:46):
a very shallow angle as a climb. Um just traversing ice,
whether using crampons or pick as we'll talk about in
a second, or both, those are those both qualifies ice climbs.
And we've got to say that. But now that we've
got the fangs in the front of the crampons, so
that that that switchblade and right boot, Now you're starting
(13:07):
to get into things like vertical climbs where you can
climb up the face of a glacier. Now, yeah, and
previous to Yvonne, how do you pronounce that? Nard? I
think so he went on to become a billionaire because
he founded Patagonia, by the way, and I want you
to know this, he's a billionaire plus um. He is
(13:27):
the guy that said, you know what, we've got these
axes that we've been using, and I think we need
to tweak them. I'm gonna chop off a few inches,
go from about to about two inches. I assume it
just made it a little more manageable, big part. Yeah,
and then he changed that shape from this. It was
(13:48):
previously straight at a really shallow angle at the shaft
of the ax, you know the head. The head was
kind of angled down right, yeah, But now I think
he curved it right. Yeah. So it looks very sist like.
It looked vicious before, but it was basically a straight
line and angle downward. Now it's like angle downward and
a straight line and then it curves back up. Yeah.
I mean it's really it's cool looking. And it's got
(14:10):
a little uh barb at the bottom, which I'm not
entirely sure what that's for. I think for probably smacking
ice around, basically chipping at it away. But so this this,
the the changes to this mountaineering axe were radical enough
that it's an entirely different tool now. Right Whereas before
the mountaineering x was, um you kind of use it
(14:32):
as a walking cane if it was long enough, because
it was longer than the ice ice axes what are
called ice tools. Um, but mostly it was if you
started to slip backward down the ice, you you. You know,
you picked the ice in front of you forward and
held on like you you stopped yourself. It's called self arrest.
You kept yourself from sliding down the mountain. Basically, that's
(14:52):
what your mountaineering access for. What you're um your ice tool,
your ice axes for is to actually just like the
front of the crampons, right, the little the fangs that
come out these ice tools. Your is an act. You
swing above yourself and you basically pull yourself up with
until you get another footing with the front of your crampons,
and then you use your leg and then use your arm,
(15:14):
and then use your leg, and then little by little
you move up the vertical face of a glacier or
more spectacularly, something like a frozen waterfall. Yeah, it looks
um beautiful and striking, and it looks like an awful
thing to do. It looks really hard, and I think
it's I've read everywhere I've read it, it's it's said
that it's even harder than it looks. Yeah, and I
(15:36):
love him. Here Teddy said something like anyone can learn
to do this if you you know, I mean, technically
she's you know, sort of right, But yeah, I think
like it's more like one percent of you could probably
do this right or want to do this. So now
all this, all the stuff is in place for ice
climbing to become an extreme sport. And this is by
the sixties, and I really started to pick up I
(15:59):
think in the seven these and eighties, and definitely by
the nineties it was an established thing. Um. So let's
let's take a little break, shall we, and then'll come
back and kind of drill in a little more to
the equipment that you're gonna need if you're going to
start climbing. Get glaciers. Great, So with this, Oh, welcome
(16:43):
back everyone, we're here, right, cheez chuck, get right to
the point already. Right, So we were talking about the
tools in these uh these axes, which you I think
they call them sticks sometimes. Oh oh, I had no
uncovered that, and go maybe might I might be wrong.
They're probably one of the coolest looking things you could
(17:05):
buy at an outfit or yes, have you seen them?
Oh sure, I'm a big fan of the petzel Ergo,
oh yeah, yeah, they're really cool. Petzel makes good stuff. Yeah,
I got a lot of information from some of Petzel's blogs.
I have to say, yeah, so there are a couple
of ways you can go with this. I mean, there
(17:25):
are all kinds you can get. They're all sort of
variations of the same thing. But um, and when I
was reading Debbie saying, it was funny because there you
can get one leashed or not leashed. And my first
instinct was, why would you ever not want to leash
on that thing? Because you drop it and it's gone.
It's a big deal if you drop your your um
ice tool. Yeah, it's not good. But she makes a
(17:47):
very good point. You know, these it's not just like, oh,
just take the leash off of your wrists, Like you've
got on heavy gear and heavy gloves and it's not
easy just to slip that thing off your wrist. So
if you want to use you might have two or
three of these for different uh you know, for different
terrains or whatever, different kinds of ice, and switching them
(18:08):
out as a pain. So what I gathered was, if
you're a really experienced ice climber, you probably don't want
to leash. No. No, And that's actually becoming um much
more prevalent called uh it unleashed, leashleashed is unleashed, right,
So that's be that's becoming much more prevalent. And one
(18:31):
of the reasons it is becoming prevalent because some of
the UM, some of the fine makers of ice tools,
like Petzel, who is not a sponsor of the podcast,
by the way, I'm just a fan UM, they have
started to create ice tools that have like real grips
on them, that have like ridges for where your fingers fit.
(18:52):
They're curved in and upward, and there's like something that
goes underneath the heel of your hands. The upshot of
all this is it's getting tough, are and tougher to
drop your your ice tool, even if it is unleashed.
But there's still plenty of people who use leashes, and
it's and when we say leash, it's it's very much
like UM a surfboard leash, whereas like a thing of
(19:13):
velcro that goes around your wrist and there's like, you know,
some unbreakable nylon rope that UM connects to a carabineer
that connects to your your ice tool. So UM I
would go with with leashed. I think if you're gonna start,
you probably are going to have it leashed for a
while until you get used to it, which which petzel
did you like the ergo? Okay, Yeah, it's beautiful and
(19:36):
it looks like it looks like they're at least three
different ways you can kill someone with this. Yeah. See
so so do you see right here where it's like
curved and like at the bottom this grip right here
totally it looks like a little pistol grip. It is,
and it's a really well made It's a work of arch. Chuck,
let's just call it that. I have a feeling you
might just get one of these, just a half, that
would be great. Keep it under the bed. Yeah, frame now,
(20:00):
I'd frame it in a shadow box and just make
up stories about all the all the glaciers. That's the one.
Just dig it up a little bit, you know, right right,
because like Josh, that looks brand new. It's got the
price tag on it. Still. So you were talking about
we're talking about the crampons earlier, and you mentioned briefly
the you know, some of them have a mono points,
(20:22):
just the one fang summer duel point, and I, as
a newbie, was like, man, I want fangs everywhere I
can get them, But that's not necessarily beneficial, is it
no and um you Well, if you have one fang,
you can really dig in deeper because you're putting all
of that force from the kick um onto the glacier
(20:46):
into that one point, hence the name mono point. So
you can really get in there and get a lot
of a lot of stability um or a lot of
um what's the word I'm looking for, chuck, A lot
of purchase. Okay, but it's not as stable as the
two fanged ones, the two pronged ones, because those have
that pressure spread out a little bit, so you have
(21:08):
a little more side to side stability, so you're kind
of trading one for the other. I think both work
is probably a matter of taste. I think it's probably
also a matter of terrain. I think the model point
works better in rocky terrain and they're able. Yeah yeah,
and you can get heal spurs um, not the dreaded
(21:28):
foot problem, but spurs coming off the rear. And again,
I'm a I'm a multi give me all the things
that you can get on my boot. Sure, I'm with you,
you know, just yeah, like like concertina wire wrapped around
your feet basically. Sure. So, um, you've got the next
(21:52):
big thing you need, and this is really basic stuff.
If you go online and really start to dig in,
out door research had some pretty good like a Beginner's
Guide to ice climbing. Um, there's a guy named Will
Gad who's just like maybe the premier ice climber in
the world, or has been for a while now. Um
he he writes a pretty technical blog. So there's a
(22:14):
lot of information you can get out there. But if
you ever look at a list of like the basic
necessities you need, it is really really extensive. I mean,
your ice tool and your crampons are just one of many,
many things that you need to have on just a
basic ice climb. But another thing that you have to
have are what it's called ice screws. And if you
(22:36):
have ever um done any rock climbing, Um, when you're
climbing up a rock, especially if it's a well traveled rock, um,
there's gonna be bolts in place in the rock and
you you know, clip onto those things and suspend yourself. Well,
when you're climbing up ice, that ice that you're climbing
might not have been there last year, or it's not
(22:57):
gonna be there three years from now, so and you're climbing.
You have to put in your own bolts and what
they've developed or what are called ice screws that are
exactly what they sound like. They're they're long screws that
you bore into the ice and then you clip your
carabine or two and um ballet from or at least
hang from. This is where it gets terrifying to me,
(23:19):
because it's ice. You know, apparently ice can be just
as strong as rock. But you know, I've had some
ice in my mouth before. Sure I can chew that
with my teeth, It's true. So it's a little bit
unnerving to me to think about screwing into ice and
(23:44):
supporting my body weight, which, of course I wouldn't be
up there like this. That'd be a death sentence. Right. Well, apparently,
if you ever want to get as physically fit as
you ever will be in your life, just start ice climbing. Well,
we would do it before you start ice climbing. Problem. Well, yeah,
you have to train for it. But I'm saying like,
if you're a nice climber, you're about in the peak
(24:08):
physical fitness that any human being is. Yes, I would
agree with that. Um, so you got your ice screws,
you've got your crampons, you've got your axe, you've got
all kinds of little spawn divots and do hickeys, you've
got your super cold weather gear, and you've got to
have that helmet because ice does chip away and fall
and you don't want to get clunked on the bean
(24:29):
when you're hanging off of a sheet of ice. Right,
And that's like another big difference between ice climbing and
rock climbing, or the overhead hazards are way more prevalent
with ice climbing them with rock climbing. I mean you
can still you know, a rock slide can happen, Little
rocks can fall off if um, you know, you go
for a ledge or something when you're rock climbing, like
(24:49):
debris can fall down, and it is a problem. But
with ice climbing, it's just a matter of fact of
the climb. There's going to be ice flying everywhere. Sometimes
way more ice comes off then you intended to um,
which we'll talk about in a little bit, but there's
going to be a lot of ice falling, so you
have to have a helmet when you're ice climbing, that's right.
(25:10):
You're gonna be doing this. You can do it kind
of anywhere in the world where there is ice on
a mountain. Plenty of places in North America. You can
go to Norway, you can go to Iceland, you can
go to the Alps in Europe. Grease kind of surprised me,
but I was just being kind of naive and dumb
with my geography. Of course, Greece has big mountains with
(25:34):
ice and snow. I just for some reason I was
thinking their mountains in Greece. Yeah, you think of like
olives and wine and stuff, you know, and then Mount
Olympus of course. Oh yeah, there's that. It's kind of
a famous one, right. I also saw Scotland actually has
some really um intense ice climb interesting. Yeah, and there's
plenty of places in the United States. There's actually an
(25:56):
ice climbing park called the ray Um that is has
an ice climbing competition every year where like the best
of the best, and actually, from what I understand, everybody
comes in and competes. Is it fake ice? I mean
not fake, but it's it's built. It's built, but it's
not like it's built on rocks. Like I think they
(26:16):
found a a spot in the world where they could
kind of grow ice. I'm not exactly sure how they
do it. I just saw that it's like human enabled basically,
Oh you need it's a garden house, right and cold temperatures.
There's some dude in bermuda shorts and a panama hat
and like dark socks up to his knees. Just with
(26:37):
this hose. Just go squirt that down for the next
three days, right stand there, Walter. Uh, there's different kinds
of ice though, and uh, when you're an experienced ice climber,
you can you can look at a face and kind
of know what you're getting into before you even come
close to it, depending on how it's laying there and
(26:57):
what color it is, how clear it is. Um. I
tried to get a read on what would be the
ideal ice, and I really couldn't quite suss that out.
This is what I saw, so, um, you want ice
that has has been around for a while, So probably
alpine ice, which started out as fallen snow. Snow that's falling,
(27:20):
because that creates different kind of ice. But there's a
big heavy snowfall that dumped on a mountain and then
the temperature is cooled and all of that snow started
to turn to ice, and as it did, um the
air got squeezed out of it by the heaviness of
the snow to begin with, but as the ice formed,
it should have as well, and then it bonds to
the actual mountain side, so it's real solid to begin with,
(27:45):
and then temperatures get around freezing maybe a little above
for about five consecutive days, and on that fifth or
sixth day of that kind of temperature, um the ice
should be just perfect for ice climbing because it takes
on the state of what's called plastic where your ice
pick just goes right in and it stays in and
(28:08):
it's you can just tell it's very satisfying. It there's
a lot of strength to it. But at the same time,
it's not like chipping into a rock because, like we said,
like one of the reasons you have to be so fit,
and you are so fit just by virtue of being
an ice climber as you expend a tremendous amount of
energy with each swing of your ice tool. Because if
(28:32):
you're working with just plastic ice, that's going to be
a pretty easy, satisfying climb. But that's a that's ideal,
that's not the norm most of the time. When you
swing that that pick and again you're on the side
of a glacier, say you're hanging on by your feet,
the fangs on the front of your feet, um, and
you are swinging above your head an axe that you're
(28:55):
hoping to get on the first try, just a really
good solid stick, but that very unlikely. Instead, you might
do three, four or five times to get a good
stick in there, and each one of those is expending
a lot of energy. And you're doing this for meters
and meters depending on how high this this ice climb
(29:16):
is um and it's it requires a tremendous amount of
energy and a lot of it is redundant um redundant effort,
having to swing that pick multiple times just to get
that one stick. Yeah, because my again my naivete thought, Man,
I want to go when it's thirty below zero because
(29:36):
I want that ice to be so frozen. I think so,
you'd think so. But the colder it gets, if it's
like really really below freezing, the ice might get brittle. Uh,
it might break off. And that's called dinner plating, I assume,
because ice pieces about the size of a dinner plate
(29:57):
will come falling off into your face. Yeah, you not
want that, man. No, So, like you said, you want
temperatures right at about freezing. Um, even a little bit
above freezing is is ideal. Yeah, but yeah, I mean
just right around there, not not too much above, because
then the ice turns into slush, and slush doesn't hold
(30:18):
you very well. So it's almost like the very first
step towards this long path towards slush is where the
ideal ice is. And I saw actually one reason why,
maybe even the only reason why, that dinner plating happens
when it's really cold, when ice becomes less stable when
it's really really cold, because I thought the same thing,
(30:38):
but um, it's because the colder it gets, the more
the ice shrinks. Well, if the ice is attached like
to the top of a cliff and the bottom of
a cliff, it can't physically shrink very well, right, it
doesn't have that shrink so instead it thins out. It
gets tense, So there's a tension in the ice and
when you hit it with your pick, it just shatters.
(31:01):
That's why you don't want it to be just ridiculously
cold out and have been for a while, because that
ice is far more tense because it's constricting under the cold.
That's right. Uh. And that alpine ice we were talking about,
is that really pretty blue ice that you see. Uh.
If ice is really really solid and climbable, it'll be
blue or blue green. Sometimes it might have a little
(31:23):
yellow to it because of the minerality to it. Uh. Really,
really white ice isn't great. Well, I mean it's not bad.
It's it's got air in it and it makes a
little bit easier to climb, but it gets a little
dicey with the screws. Yeah. And the reason why is
because that air that um can form when say, like
a waterfall freezes, and it's essentially a flash freeze. It
(31:45):
doesn't happen for a very long period of time. Yeah,
people climb those, dude. I've seen pictures climbing of Rosen waterfall.
It's yes, it's nuts. But the reason why, and you
can see it's it is very it's very opaque. Um,
it's very white. And the reason why it's because there's
a lot of air trapped in there. Same thing with
um when it's falling snow that's turning to ice, not
(32:06):
snow that was already fell and then turned to ice,
but it's turning to ice as it's falling. That traps
a lot of air in there too. And yeah, you
can get a pretty good you know, pick stick in there,
but it's not going to support you because it's inherently
less dense. It's less solid because there's so much air
trapped inside. That's right. Uh. And I don't think we
(32:26):
mentioned the chandelier ice. It's very pretty. Um, these are
icicles that have fused together, but it's not great for climbing.
It's doesn't hold the screws very well. Uh. And if
you're if you're an ice climber, you know your way
around all this stuff. You know where to head toward
your down there at the bottom looking at your route anyway, Um,
(32:47):
you know which way do I want to go to
get the best ice. But you can navigate most of
this stuff pretty well, and you know to stay away
from I mean, people still die doing it. Of course,
mistakes and accidents happen, but you know what you're getting into,
and you know what kind of ice. You're not gonna
just try and stab into a chandelier. No, but I
did see. Um, it's called reading the ice where you're
(33:09):
just standing there basically visually mentally, um, doing your climb,
going through it in your head. And there's plenty of
like you know, perennial ice sheets that aren't going anywhere
for you know, well for and for the next couple
of decades at least, but um, they've been there for
a really long time and people climb them. And then
once you climb them and you get a good pick
(33:30):
stick in there, when you pull your pick back out,
that stick is still there. So the people who follow
after you use the same things. Right, It's like a
allege or something in rock climbing. It stays there well,
so um that makes the climbing a lot a lot
more easy. Hum. Um. One of the coolest things about
(33:50):
free solo was and this was something I didn't know.
I kind of thought, like, you go to climb a
rock and you kind of just do your thing and
what route you think is best. But established places like
El Capitan, which is you know what this one focused on,
there are only certain ways you can even climb it,
and they're very well established routes. They're named and um,
(34:12):
you should see this, dude, You're gonna you're gonna love it. Okay,
I'll see you it's really I will, I will watch
it simultaneously. When you watch Uh, it's a wonderful life. Okay, Um,
but I would suggest if you don't know anything about
the story, you're not like googling into it, just watch
it because there are some there's some stress as to
(34:33):
what you think might happen if you don't know the
real stories, the real story I will, I liked. I'm like,
I'd like to go in fresh Okay, so um, but
what you're saying is is like there is a set way,
maybe a handful of different ways you can climb El Capitan.
Same thing with these climbs, but depending on whether this
(34:55):
is new ice that's not going to be there at
the end of the season because it's like a frozen waterfall.
It's gonna unfreeze and freezes differently every single time, every
single year year. Um, you may be the first person
to make this climb, and so you have to get
super inventive or it could be you know, one that's
been climbed by a bunch of people, and um, it's
a lot easier because you don't have to exert quite
(35:15):
as much energy. I saw, I saw, Um, you know,
one climb of the same grade. We'll talk about grades
in a second. Can be you know, can take an
hour or can I should say, not me, but can
take that? Will gad guy an hour? But one that's
been picked through already, Um, it will take him like
ten minutes. What fun is that I would forge my
(35:37):
own path? Yeah, I guess, and you can you could maybe,
I don't know. Actually you should probably just follow the
existing path. All right. Should we take another break? Yes?
We should. All right, let's do that and then we'll
talk a little bit about technique right after this. Alright,
(36:19):
So remember ice climbing also includes going up very gentle
slopes on glaciers at the top of the mountain. Like
basically when you're watching somebody, you're like, oh, they're just walking,
but it's there's ice that they're walking on, so it's
really hard to walk on. So there's actual techniques that
are involved in that level of ice climbing. Um. And
the first one is just flat footing, which is well,
(36:40):
you would just basically call it walking, but you're walking
with your feet kind of turned out like a duck
going along the ice with again with your mountaineering axe. UM,
to keep yourself from sliding down the mountain if you
start to slip. Yeah, and you may the French technique
is what it's also called. You may not eat and
be used in your acts at this point. But like
(37:02):
you said, it's just sort of like a duck walk.
If you look up, you're walking with your um. There's
a lot of stress on the inside part of your feet, right,
which is tough. And if you do this a lot, um,
it's tough on your ankles. You might want to switch
to something called side stepping. Um. That's exactly what it
sounds like. But you know there's an inherent risk there
(37:24):
because you're you're bringing those boots with those crampons which
are highly snagg able over each other, and it would
be very easy and tricky to snag one ft and
you don't want to do that. No, And not only that,
if you are smart, you're probably using a rope line
um that you're connected to, uh to keep you from
(37:46):
actually falling off of the mountain, So you're having to
step over that as well, or to step with that
connected to the front of your body. Um. Yeah, so
it's it's got to be extremely difficult to do. But again,
it's a lot easier than cutting like a foothold like
they used to do in the old timing days, like
oct oscar Exstein. I wonder people free solo ice They do, yes,
(38:10):
so yes, if you just have crampons and the pick axes.
Some people like climbing a waterfall. There might not be
anywhere to put screws in um and you just you
just use that. You use the axes above you and
the crampons uh in in front of you, and you
(38:30):
just climb up a waterfall. That's a form of ice climbing.
I think it's very rare. I think most people are
much more safety conscious and stop. Put in an ice screw,
you know, clip into that and then you know, move
up and we'll talk a little more about that in
a second. But I think that's the norm. But people
do free solo ice climb with just their tools and
(38:51):
their crampons. Yeah, and just like free solong on on
a rock. That's the that's the subset even of experience
rock climbers, right, because it's you know, one as they say,
one fall does it all? It's kookie, man, Yeah, it's
a nerve wracking one fault does it at all? That's good? Thanks? Uh,
(39:12):
then we need to talk about the German technique. This
is what I would do. Uh. And this is where
those front fangs come into play, because the Germans got
in there and they were like, I don't want to
walk like a duck, I don't want to sidestep, I
don't want to look goofy. Why don't you just kick
into that thing and climbate like a ladder? Yeah, And
I think it's depending on what type of um, what
(39:36):
what type of technique you're using. It very much depends
on the degree or the angle of the terrain. Yeah,
Like you can't front point if that you know, there's
not enough of an angle in front of you. So
by the time your front pointing that things that like
a fifties sixty degree angle by now and then onward
to nine degree plus. Yeah. And I also saw a
(39:58):
lot of pictures of p people using too, That's all
I saw. But that's not always the way though. No.
And in fact, Debbie basically describes like as the basic
technique that you're just using one ax so that you're
forming a triangle with your body with your feet at
(40:20):
about shoulder with the part beneath you, and then your
acts like in the center above you forming a triangle.
Um which I didn't see anybody. She is right, she
knows a lot more than we do about that. But um, yeah,
I didn't see anyone using that. Everyone was using technique
that she called um uh traction, which is basically what
(40:41):
I described. You've got two axes, one just above each shoulder,
and your feet are shoulder at the part, and you're
just climbing up one bit at a time like a
like a human fly. Yeah, I would want to I
want three. I would grow another arm and I would
have three axes in that right, I would just stay
(41:03):
at the lodge. Oh man, A little hot cocoa, maybe
some whiskey. Whiskey and hot cocoa. I don't know how
that would be nice? Fire? Yes, what else? I think
that's it? And maybe um yeah, no, that's it. That's
all you need? Flannel body suit? Uh yeah, I was
(41:24):
gonna say, really nice like sweater. Sure yeah, maybe some meatballs?
Sure this sounds great. Oh fonn do? How about that?
There you go, Chuck, I can always go for some
fonn do. I haven't done had that in a while. Um,
have you ever had roclette? I don't think so what
(41:46):
is so Umi's aunt and uncle got us into it.
It's like the seventies thing in the vein of fawn do.
But it's like this this cook top, but and you
end up in bed with another woman. It's this cook
took up that you cook like vegetables or you know, um,
whatever you want. I mean, typically it's like mushrooms or
(42:06):
onions or something like that. And then just underneath there's
another heating element and you put hunks of cheese typically
green air or um, I think gree air usually uh,
and then you melt it and then you put it
all together on your plate. So it's just melted, gooey,
awesome cheese over like you know, freshly um saute vegetables.
(42:29):
It's really really good, and it's also fun because you're
just sitting there cooking, talking and everything. It's just like
a good little social what's it called seventies dinner? Recolette
And originally reclett was a big wheel of cheese pushed
close to a fire so that it was kind of melty,
and you just walk up with hunks of bread and
like you know, scoop out hunks of gooey cheese with it. Um.
(42:51):
This is like kind of a like the Milton Bradley
version of Raclette that I'm talking about. But is the
reclette the actual cheese or this you? I think it
was originally the cheese, but now it's both the cheese
and the unit. Okay, look at there, you'll see what
you're talking about. Yeah, I can quite picture it, right, So, yeah,
it is kind of tough to describe in my own defense,
(43:12):
but it's it's really cool. It's so is the idea
that the juices dropped down into the cheese or is it?
Why is it even together? Then? Just efficiency? You got
one one unit? All right. I guarantee whoever invented that
never envisioned two dudes in talking about it calling it
(43:34):
a unit. You know. Yeah, no way, man, that looks good.
It is. It is good. We'll have to have a
Reclette party sometime. Fantastic. You're gonna love it too. Uh So,
where were we here? We're talking about reclette, right, but
were we climbing high up an ice waterfall? Uh? We?
(43:55):
I think we're talking about the techniques, and we both
agreed that we would want at least two acts. As
you said, you would grow a third arm for a
third ax, but you're using both feet and both arms
in what's called the um the traction technique attraction technique.
You're looking to not dinner plate, so you're looking for
the strongest ice. If it's convex, that's probably not a
(44:17):
good place to to throw that ax into. It'll probably
shatter and dinner plate, although occasionally you might dinner plate
and find a very much stronger piece of ice underneath
that ice. Yeah, and so um Debbie suggests if you are,
you know the best way to prevent dinner plating is
to just kind of not use your full force if
(44:39):
you can swinging that pick and uh, maybe kind of
testing to see what kind of resistance you get. Also,
you want to listen out for sounds to hollow sounds
or not good vibrations in the ice when you swing
your your tool into it not good either. You don't
want to trust that ice, So you're listening out, you're
feeling out, um, and if it looks like the area
(45:02):
is gonna dinner plate or just chip away or fall
away or fracture, um, sometimes it is best to just
hit it and get rid of it and then find
that better ice underneath. If you think the ice is
thick enough, right, and you know you are using your
arms to be sure, But like with any kind of
climbing sport, most of the work is being done by
your legs. Yeah. Yeah, you want most of the weight
(45:26):
on your legs for sure. Angle no no, no, no no,
But that does happen. So you know you're talking about
one fall, does it all? With ice climbing, that is
pretty true unless you have like a good repelling system
going on, uh, and you're clipped into some good ice
crews that have a good purchase into the ice. If
(45:47):
you fall, um, you're going to be in big trouble
because usually when you fall while your ice climbing, a
lot of ice falls with you. So even if the
impact with the ground doesn't hurt you, something else falling
on you might. So don't forget. Your tools are really
really they're as sharp as they look. And um, I
was reading about the ray competition and how I think
(46:08):
within the last couple of years, Um, there was some
guy who lacerated his arm so badly and kept climbing
that they had to shovel out the bloody snow at
the foot of the climb. That's unsightly. No one wants
to see that, and he wasn't the only one to
do that, Like some guy had to go to the hospital.
If you wor it might have been the same guy
with another laceration. So the tools are really dangerous. And
that's a really big difference from what I understand between
(46:30):
rock climbing and ice climbing. If you rock climb, falling
is it's not great, but it's not unheard of. You
might even say it's kind of a common thing to
fall during rock climbing, and the chances are you're probably
going to survive it with a recoverable injury, if you're
injured at all. With ice climbing, it's very infrequent that
(46:51):
people fall because when you do fall ice climbing, it's
a really big deal and you can you can be
seriously hurt or killed from that fall. And I mean,
look at those icicles. Yeah. There was a woman named
Um Sue Not who was a premier ice climber. Um.
She and a woman named Carrie McCarry McNeil, another premier
(47:11):
ice climber. They were lost. As far as I know,
they've never been found. Back in two thousands, six m
Mount Foraker in Denali National Park, in Alaska and Mount
Forker has something called the Infinite um. Oh, I can't believe.
I don't remember the name of it. Um fang. I
think man pretty good band name. I know it's a
(47:36):
great it's a great name for it. But um, anyway,
they were lost on this. It's like one of the
one of the hardest, most difficult climbs ice climbs in
the world. And these two like the kind where you
have to like, um, you know, camp out on the
side of a mountain over multiple days and nights to
like make these climbs. This is like some serious stuff
(47:59):
and um, these two were perfectly capable of doing it.
They just happened to get caught in some bad weather
and have never been heard from again. But this is
in two thousand six and eight years before in a competition.
It might have been at ray Uh. Sue Not was
climbing and she was injured when she fell and some
ice speared her. Wow, yeah it does. It's called the
(48:24):
Infinite Spur. Yeah. So, um they were climbing the Infinite
Spurring got lost. In two thou six was a bad
year for ice climbing deaths in general. Not only were
Sue Not and Karen McNeil lost, but a guy named
Harry Burger, Okay, well he was lost in just like
(48:44):
a routine training practice. That was just a freak accident.
And I read about it and they said there was
no amount of training, there is no amount of preparation,
there's no amount of caution that could have saved him.
This was just a Greek accident that happened. But he
was trapped under ice, like a hundred and fifty tons
of it fell on him. He was while he was
(49:06):
climbing it. And I mean this guy was world class
from what I read. So we're soon not and Karen
McNeil and these are just this is a really really
dangerous extreme sport. Yeah, I mean that's that's the thrill
with any extreme sport deep down, as you know you
could die that day. You don't want to, but that's
part of what makes you know, that adrenaline kick up
(49:29):
to such a level. Yeah that, uh, that these people
do those things. Yeah, it's true. And I mean, you know,
you're in the mountains and there's a lot of chance
for things like avalanches to happen, and um ice can
fall on you. You can hurt yourself with your tool
you can lose your tool, you can get caught in
a blizzard. Um, the wind can get so bad that
(49:49):
it can blow you off the mountain. There's just a
lot of things, and there's definitely you know, precautions you
can take, like, um, if you were an ice climber,
you have an avalanche beakin with you. It's just part
of your gear. You have a first aid kit with you,
that's part of your gear too. You know how to
use your ice cruise and you're clipped in everywhere. Um,
there's a lot of precautions you can take. But it
(50:10):
is an inherently dangerous sport for sure, of course, and
you always need to remember that you've got to get
back down unless you're like being helicoptered out or something,
which I don't even know if it's a thing. It's
probably a thing for the richies. But you know you're
going down as well, and you, uh, you gotta plan
out your day so that you're doing that safely and
(50:31):
at the right time of day. And um, you know
they always say that even hiking downhill can be tougher
on you than hiking up hill, right, because you're already
worn out at this point and that's when mistakes can happen.
So uh, and we keep saying experience ice climbers. I
guess you always have to do something for the first time,
but it seems a little redundant to say experienced ice climber,
(50:54):
you know, right, yeah, yeah, you're definitely doing it for
the first multiple times with a very knowledgeable guy who's
telling you how to do everything, and you're probably already
an experienced rock climber. I doubt if you start off
with ice climbing, it would have would probably be really weird.
I wonder if anyone ever has, you know, like I
never climbed a rock before, but look at that frozen waterfall.
(51:15):
But one thing I'm not I would like to be
able to do this. I don't know if I ever will.
But one thing that really caught my attention was you know,
when you're fueling up in the morning before your ice climb,
you want to eat um. What I saw was like,
think the Trucker's special breakfast at a diner pr and eggs,
and I could I could get into that kind of
sport where that's what you eat, and they're like, bring
(51:37):
food that doesn't freeze, so don't bring bananas, bring Oreo
cookies instead. I was like, I really like this ice climbing. Wow.
You know the It's sadly not there anymore because Atlanta
has just really changed in the past fifteen years. But
there used to be a place called Austin Avenue Buffet.
I don't know if you ever went there. It was
a long long time ago. It's on obviously Austin Avenue,
(51:59):
which is not kind of chey, but this place was
a great dumpy dive and they served food and they
had in the mornings, they had the painter Special, which
was eggs, bacon, toast, and a tall Boy PBR. I
thought it was kind of funny. Wow was the food good? No, okay,
(52:19):
I'm swimming. I didn't eat. I just drink. I guess
I was in there in the morning for eggs painting.
It was pretty cool place. So so there was one
other thing I wanted to mention. Two. There's a very
controversial side to um ice climbing. The ice climbing community
and the rock climbing community are frequently one and the same,
but also separate in some ways. And one of the
(52:41):
ways they are separate and is that sometimes ice climbers
will say hey, I'm I'm gonna practice, but I don't
feel like driving up to the mountains. Um, so I'm
gonna use my tools on a rock climb, which is
called dry tooling, and it has all sorts of negative
effects on a rock climbing course. Um. It can chip
(53:02):
away ledges and all sorts of stuff. It leaves scars
on the rocks. It's it's rock climbers do not like that.
So there's kind of like a little bit of a
civil war in the climbing community between people who um
rock climbing people who dry tool climb and uh get
the impression. Dry toolers are not very well liked and
(53:24):
sounds kind of dirty too, dry tool Okay, UM, oh,
one other thing, since we're just throwing stuff out at
this point, I ran across the website called jyvass anchors
dot com and it basically is just this blog that
makes fun of people's ridiculously dangerous and ill advised anchors
(53:45):
for their climbs, like you know, things they're um they're
they're um connected into with their their carabineers. And all
that was verbatim the description of the blog, including all
the us I believe it. You do not all, Right,
listen to ice climbing once and for all, shall we? Yeah,
(54:07):
if you want to know more about ice climbing, there's
a lot to go read and then try and make
sure you do it safely. So there you go, and
in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this Gifted and talented. Uh, this is great. Hey, guys,
I'm a Gifted and Talented GT specialist at an elementary
(54:28):
school and my students range from kindergarten to fifth grade.
We have an ongoing side project that was inspired by you.
We have two posters where we've created a list of
band names and song names and someone here's something they
say that'd be a good band name, I write it down.
They do the same thing for songs. They also have
decided the genre of some of these bands, which is
your job. Uh. They even took it a step further
(54:48):
like the GT kids often do and decided they need
to create a synopsis of the songs when they think
of one. I'm just picturing kindergarteners doing this and it
delights me to know. End Really, So, here's some of
the band names and what genre used. Mirrors not bad
Mr ma'am, I love that one. That's a great one. Yes,
(55:11):
she said, that's a pop group, ancient falls, she said,
either well, she said, alternative or maybe jazz. But you
are the authority, dumb and dangerous. Ah, that sounds like
an old man band. Okay. And then the loud mouths
or just loud mouths, which she said is clearly punk
(55:33):
it is or um yeah, punk, post punk, alternative loud
mouths yea. She closes with this, knowing these kids they
will take on one of these band names one day
and become the most successful band ever seen. My students
are absolutely amazing, so I'm not surprised by anything they do.
I enjoy listening while I'm completing all the hours of
(55:54):
paperwork apt to do. Keep up the good work and
big big shout out to Angie kind of and heritage
elementary gifted and talented kids. That's awesome. Thanks Ms Cannell
and your class for writing in those are awesome. What
was my favorite? Chuck again, Mr ma'am, that's a good one.
(56:14):
That's so good. Uh. If you want to get in
touch with this, like Ms Cannell did and her class,
you can send us an email. Wrap it up. Spank
it on the bottom and send it off to Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
more podcasts for my heart radio because at the iHeart
(56:36):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hello, people in Vancouver and Portland's we're coming to see you,
uh in March. Okay, did I step on you? No? No,
I stepped on you, I think. Man. All right, well
this is as clunky as we usually are. Uh, we
are going to be coming to those two fair cities
that I learned don't have direct flights yesterday and I
(00:20):
can't wait regardless, So we're gonna be in Vancouver on Sunday,
March twenty nine at the Chance Center. That's right. We're
kicking it up a notch there, so we need your support, yeah,
for real. And then the next day we're really kicking
it up a notch maybe two. In Portland. We're gonna
be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March that's right,
and we need your support there to Portland because uh again,
(00:42):
these are bigger venues. We're giving it a whorld. Don't
don't put egg on our faces for God's sake. Yeah. Yeah,
So you could get all sorts of information, you can
buy tickets, everything you need to go to s Y
s K live dot com and we'll see you in March.
Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of I
Heart Radios. How stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:09):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there,
and there's Jerry Um abominable snowman rolling, sorry, abominable snow
person rolling. I think she's more of a Burger meister,
Meister Burger, Do you think so? Yeah? I guess you're
absolutely right, Chuck. Who would be the abominable snowman of
(01:31):
the three of us? I think clearly me. Do you
think so, I'm the most horrific? Yes? But your um,
your attitudes, your general view on life is very much
not like that abominable snowman. Well, I'm fairly likable too.
I'm sort of like the Harry and the Henderson's big
(01:51):
foot that's right, scary looking but soft on the inside. Okay,
so then Jerry's John Lithgow and I'm one of the
trees in a scene. Okay, what was John liftgo? But
I missed that Harry and the Henderson, So I just
got confused. I do remember him being hearing the Henderson's
(02:13):
But because of what we're talking about today, I thought
you were making a reference to the Stallone. Uh what
was that movie where he was like a climber. It
wasn't No, that was the troll to movie face off.
I don't remember. I know what you're talking about. But
wasn't John liftgaw in that I think so. But actually
(02:34):
the big twist to all this is I wasn't making
it Harry and the Henderson's reference. I was making a
raising Caine reference. Oh good lord, this is all the rails. Cliffhanger, right, cliffhanger.
That's right, that's right, yeah, yeah yeah, and John Lull
was in it boom yeah. And it was stillone yeah,
you know, from the master filmmaker, Rennie Harlan. I like
(02:56):
Renny Harlan. I don't care what anybody says. I saw
The Long Kiss good Night finally that that's been on
your list for twelve years. World class movie starting at
about this halfway mark. Okay, all right, So we're talking
ice climbing today, and I guess I should probably start
by asking just verifying, Um, no, I haven't have you
(03:19):
ever seen I uh, I have seen ice, I've never
ice climbed. And you know, another funny little thing is
I don't know if you notice that my friend Debbie
Ranka wrote this from the old House Notice Yep, that's
quality stuff. She puts out the good stuff. Well she does.
She did a great job researching. But it's just funny
(03:41):
knowing Debbie. She is uh about as far away you
can get from someone who might ice climb. But wasn't
she into Roller Derby's sure? Okay, So I mean so
there's a sense of adventure. Yeah, but I was surprised
she did roller Derby. Uh, okay, I got you. So
(04:02):
it's a surprise you to roller River. Yeah, there's no
way she's gonna ice climb, even she doesn't like the
cold weather, so nothing about it, even from what I
can understand from ice climbing, I mean, we're far from experts.
We just did some research on ice climbing for ice
climb before. I haven't either. Um, and we'll probably get
some stuff from but please be forgiving. We're trying our
best here. But um, from what I can tell, even
(04:24):
rock climbers don't typically ice climb. They are a very
niche cadre. I think if you're an ice climber, you
started I was a rock climber. But just because your
rock climber does not automatically mean you can you can
be an ice climber there. They seem similar at first,
but when you really start to dig in, the nuance
between the two is pretty significant when you're out there
(04:45):
on the face of a glacier. Yeah, and I also
think that, um, there are plenty of rock climbers who
just want to go like shirt off or tank top
and shorts and not. Yeah, because part of ice climbing
is it's really cold. Yeah, it's a it's cold, it's
(05:06):
equipment heavy. Yeah, there's a lot, there's just a there's
a lot of differences. We'll go over some of the
differences as they pop up, but just suffice to say
that if you're familiar with rock climbing, that doesn't automatically
mean you're gonna be familiar with ice climbing. No, And
I don't think you need to sweat get in details
wrong because there's probably like a six ice climbers Max
who might listen to this show. Yeah, Oh, I think
(05:27):
that's a generous number. Have you seen the Free Solo
documentary yet? No? I haven't didn't it. It was either
up for an oscar at one and I think it
won a couple of years ago. Yeah, No, I haven't
seen it, really, really, really good. I'm sure I would
faint they just watching it. You know, it's pretty tense.
Although I will say this, Chuck. On the other day,
I was on a flight and um, everything just kept
(05:51):
bottoming out. We ran into some terrible weather and I
was just like filing my nails like it was nothing.
That's why you have to like tend leading in front
of me. They ache because I file them too too deeply.
All right, ice climbing, Okay, so your story, Yeah, that
was it. I just thought you'd appreciate that. Afraid of flying,
(06:14):
I was, you know, talking about heights and all that. Sure,
so there is talking about um, what was it called free,
free solo? What's the name of the documentary? So that
actually applies also kind of to ice climbing, as we'll
see later. So there are some some similarities, but there's
also some big differences. But ice climbing really more than
anything evolved out of mountaineering, because when you're climbing an
(06:37):
alpine mountain or a mountain that's really at a really
high altitude, it's not all just like green grass and
the von Trapp family and you know, birds singing in
your ear. It gets really cold up there. There's a
lot of snow, there's a lot of ice, and you
are going to eventually face a point where either you
have to turn back around and go back down and say, well,
(06:58):
I'm not gonna summit this mountain, or you have to
figure how to climb ice. And some of the earliest
mountaineers had some real trouble with this. And it wasn't
until a guy named Oscar um Ekenstein, right probably thank you,
very very nice, Um invented something called crampons that really
(07:19):
um change the game. I guess. Yeah. These are those
super cool looking, uh toothed claws that you originally you
would just strap them to your boots. They're like, you know,
super sharp cleats basically that you could strap to your boots.
You can still strap them to your boots, but you
can also get boots. And of course that I'm gonna
(07:40):
kind of pepper this with what I would do that
was a nice climber. I would get the built ins um,
but you can still go by the ones you strap
on as well. I have to say, that's all I
saw were the strap on ones. Really, I think they
have them built in now. I looked, I couldn't find him.
I saw some reference to him, but it looked more
(08:00):
like like actual cleats where it's like a crampon. Okay,
maybe that's it's different then. Also, I really hope I'm
pronouncing that correctly. Is a crampon? I think so. So,
you know, if you're a mountaineering couple and you need
to be very sweet, if your wife asked you to
go buy a box of crampons, right, you got to
do that. So when you you know there, they are
(08:21):
cleat like in in you know, design, But when you
really get down to it, I mean, the teeth on
those things are really long and really sharp, and they
have to be because you have to dig into some
serious stuff, some really hard ice with them. So from
what I saw, the everything I came across was all
like the strap on crampons. Strap strap on crampon. Right,
(08:44):
I love it. So when Oscar Etkenstein, I'm sorry, Ekenstein
invented the crampons. Um he was a mountaineer. He was
an early proponent of what's called bouldering, which is basically
climbing up over big rocks free solo wing. It's kind
of even even lighter gear than rock climbing. And this
guy was doing this at the turn of the last century.
(09:05):
He was actually friends with Alistair Crowley too, it turns
out who wasn't interesting cat though. So um Oscar oscar
Etkenstein just changed everything with these crampons, because suddenly you
could walk through um a walk on a glacier at
a certain amount of a grade. And it just kind
of was the first big step, and it was a
(09:26):
very big step toward this um this sport extreme sport
of ice climbing. Yeah, and I think, um, I don't
think we mentioned did we that? Before this? You could
still do that, but it would take a long long
time because you would have to literally it's called step cutting.
You would have to cut your steps into the ice
um as you go, instead of just having these death boots.
(09:48):
That's a better name for him. Could you imagine getting
kicked with one of those, No, you would just bleed out.
Surely that's been done in a movie, probably in Cliffhanger. Yeah,
death by crampon. Surely there is no way that doesn't
happen Cliffhanger. Maybe that's how John lythgo goes down. I
don't I didn't see Cliffhanger. Is it ice or is
it just Mountain. I think it's both because I remember
(10:09):
on the movie poster it's like Stallone hanging by one
hand from like a Rocky Craig, but he's wearing like
a north Face jacket. So I'm thinking it's a little
bit of both. Alright, mixed climbing, I think is what
they call it. Well, you know Stallone, he likes to
mix it up. He definitely does so. History wise, things advanced,
as they do with all sports. And about five years later,
(10:33):
twenty years later, there was a climber named Laurent Grivelle
who these first crampons were just sort of on the
bottom like cleats. He said, hey, you know what these
things need. They need fangs coming out of the toe,
out of the front, like those cowboy boots, to have
like a switchblade. Totally. You know, I think Roadhouse had
(10:56):
some of those who I'm not mistaken, probably because Cliffhang.
There's one point where I think it's Sam Elliott and
a bar fight says right boot, and there's just a
knife in this guy's boot. Sam Ellie is so helpful, man,
he really is, right boot. That was just a quote
(11:18):
my old friend, uh, my dear departed friend, Billy used
to say in college. Right, that's a good quote. So
the fangs coming out of the front really change things
because now they're like, hey, not only can we walk
up fairly steep slopes, but we can get near vertical
with this stuff, because we can just kick our toes
right into this and just climb. And I don't know
(11:41):
if you said it or not, but um uh was
it Lauren Grivel? No, I'm sorry, I von Schwinard. No,
we've just gotten to him in the nineteen sixties, the
swinging sixties. So um, with that, with that cramp on,
with the thing that comes out of the front. I've
seen it called a point. I've seen it called fangs,
but it can be like one point or two points,
(12:02):
and they have kind of like their ups and downs.
We'll talk about them a little bit later. But now
finally you start to get to what most people think
of ice climbing, because we should say, um, it took
me a little while to understand just walking basically up
a very gentle slope in in the mountains over ice
is really difficult to do, and that that qualifies as
(12:25):
ice climbing. That's like a certain grade of an ice climb.
Um what most people think of, if they've ever heard
of ice climbing, is somebody climbing up the sheer face
of a glacier with those cool looking death right. And
those are both two different types of what are called climbs.
Climbing straight up as a climb, climbing at an angle
(12:46):
a very shallow angle as a climb. Um just traversing ice,
whether using crampons or pick as we'll talk about in
a second, or both, those are those both qualifies ice climbs.
And we've got to say that. But now that we've
got the fangs in the front of the crampons, so
that that that switchblade and right boot, Now you're starting
(13:07):
to get into things like vertical climbs where you can
climb up the face of a glacier. Now, yeah, and
previous to Yvonne, how do you pronounce that? Nard? I
think so he went on to become a billionaire because
he founded Patagonia, by the way, and I want you
to know this, he's a billionaire plus um. He is
(13:27):
the guy that said, you know what, we've got these
axes that we've been using, and I think we need
to tweak them. I'm gonna chop off a few inches,
go from about to about two inches. I assume it
just made it a little more manageable, big part. Yeah,
and then he changed that shape from this. It was
(13:48):
previously straight at a really shallow angle at the shaft
of the ax, you know the head. The head was
kind of angled down right, yeah, But now I think
he curved it right. Yeah. So it looks very sist like.
It looked vicious before, but it was basically a straight
line and angle downward. Now it's like angle downward and
a straight line and then it curves back up. Yeah.
I mean it's really it's cool looking. And it's got
(14:10):
a little uh barb at the bottom, which I'm not
entirely sure what that's for. I think for probably smacking
ice around, basically chipping at it away. But so this this,
the the changes to this mountaineering axe were radical enough
that it's an entirely different tool now. Right Whereas before
the mountaineering x was, um you kind of use it
(14:32):
as a walking cane if it was long enough, because
it was longer than the ice ice axes what are
called ice tools. Um, but mostly it was if you
started to slip backward down the ice, you you. You know,
you picked the ice in front of you forward and
held on like you you stopped yourself. It's called self arrest.
You kept yourself from sliding down the mountain. Basically, that's
(14:52):
what your mountaineering access for. What you're um your ice tool,
your ice axes for is to actually just like the
front of the crampons, right, the little the fangs that
come out these ice tools. Your is an act. You
swing above yourself and you basically pull yourself up with
until you get another footing with the front of your crampons,
and then you use your leg and then use your arm,
(15:14):
and then use your leg, and then little by little
you move up the vertical face of a glacier or
more spectacularly, something like a frozen waterfall. Yeah, it looks
um beautiful and striking, and it looks like an awful
thing to do. It looks really hard, and I think
it's I've read everywhere I've read it, it's it's said
that it's even harder than it looks. Yeah, and I
(15:36):
love him. Here Teddy said something like anyone can learn
to do this if you you know, I mean, technically
she's you know, sort of right, But yeah, I think
like it's more like one percent of you could probably
do this right or want to do this. So now
all this, all the stuff is in place for ice
climbing to become an extreme sport. And this is by
the sixties, and I really started to pick up I
(15:59):
think in the seven these and eighties, and definitely by
the nineties it was an established thing. Um. So let's
let's take a little break, shall we, and then'll come
back and kind of drill in a little more to
the equipment that you're gonna need if you're going to
start climbing. Get glaciers. Great, So with this, Oh, welcome
(16:43):
back everyone, we're here, right, cheez chuck, get right to
the point already. Right, So we were talking about the
tools in these uh these axes, which you I think
they call them sticks sometimes. Oh oh, I had no
uncovered that, and go maybe might I might be wrong.
They're probably one of the coolest looking things you could
(17:05):
buy at an outfit or yes, have you seen them?
Oh sure, I'm a big fan of the petzel Ergo,
oh yeah, yeah, they're really cool. Petzel makes good stuff. Yeah,
I got a lot of information from some of Petzel's blogs.
I have to say, yeah, so there are a couple
of ways you can go with this. I mean, there
(17:25):
are all kinds you can get. They're all sort of
variations of the same thing. But um, and when I
was reading Debbie saying, it was funny because there you
can get one leashed or not leashed. And my first
instinct was, why would you ever not want to leash
on that thing? Because you drop it and it's gone.
It's a big deal if you drop your your um
ice tool. Yeah, it's not good. But she makes a
(17:47):
very good point. You know, these it's not just like, oh,
just take the leash off of your wrists, Like you've
got on heavy gear and heavy gloves and it's not
easy just to slip that thing off your wrist. So
if you want to use you might have two or
three of these for different uh you know, for different
terrains or whatever, different kinds of ice, and switching them
(18:08):
out as a pain. So what I gathered was, if
you're a really experienced ice climber, you probably don't want
to leash. No. No, And that's actually becoming um much
more prevalent called uh it unleashed, leashleashed is unleashed, right,
So that's be that's becoming much more prevalent. And one
(18:31):
of the reasons it is becoming prevalent because some of
the UM, some of the fine makers of ice tools,
like Petzel, who is not a sponsor of the podcast,
by the way, I'm just a fan UM, they have
started to create ice tools that have like real grips
on them, that have like ridges for where your fingers fit.
(18:52):
They're curved in and upward, and there's like something that
goes underneath the heel of your hands. The upshot of
all this is it's getting tough, are and tougher to
drop your your ice tool, even if it is unleashed.
But there's still plenty of people who use leashes, and
it's and when we say leash, it's it's very much
like UM a surfboard leash, whereas like a thing of
(19:13):
velcro that goes around your wrist and there's like, you know,
some unbreakable nylon rope that UM connects to a carabineer
that connects to your your ice tool. So UM I
would go with with leashed. I think if you're gonna start,
you probably are going to have it leashed for a
while until you get used to it, which which petzel
did you like the ergo? Okay, Yeah, it's beautiful and
(19:36):
it looks like it looks like they're at least three
different ways you can kill someone with this. Yeah. See
so so do you see right here where it's like
curved and like at the bottom this grip right here
totally it looks like a little pistol grip. It is,
and it's a really well made It's a work of arch. Chuck,
let's just call it that. I have a feeling you
might just get one of these, just a half, that
would be great. Keep it under the bed. Yeah, frame now,
(20:00):
I'd frame it in a shadow box and just make
up stories about all the all the glaciers. That's the one.
Just dig it up a little bit, you know, right right,
because like Josh, that looks brand new. It's got the
price tag on it. Still. So you were talking about
we're talking about the crampons earlier, and you mentioned briefly
the you know, some of them have a mono points,
(20:22):
just the one fang summer duel point, and I, as
a newbie, was like, man, I want fangs everywhere I
can get them, But that's not necessarily beneficial, is it
no and um you Well, if you have one fang,
you can really dig in deeper because you're putting all
of that force from the kick um onto the glacier
(20:46):
into that one point, hence the name mono point. So
you can really get in there and get a lot
of a lot of stability um or a lot of
um what's the word I'm looking for, chuck, A lot
of purchase. Okay, but it's not as stable as the
two fanged ones, the two pronged ones, because those have
that pressure spread out a little bit, so you have
(21:08):
a little more side to side stability, so you're kind
of trading one for the other. I think both work
is probably a matter of taste. I think it's probably
also a matter of terrain. I think the model point
works better in rocky terrain and they're able. Yeah yeah,
and you can get heal spurs um, not the dreaded
(21:28):
foot problem, but spurs coming off the rear. And again,
I'm a I'm a multi give me all the things
that you can get on my boot. Sure, I'm with you,
you know, just yeah, like like concertina wire wrapped around
your feet basically. Sure. So, um, you've got the next
(21:52):
big thing you need, and this is really basic stuff.
If you go online and really start to dig in,
out door research had some pretty good like a Beginner's
Guide to ice climbing. Um, there's a guy named Will
Gad who's just like maybe the premier ice climber in
the world, or has been for a while now. Um
he he writes a pretty technical blog. So there's a
(22:14):
lot of information you can get out there. But if
you ever look at a list of like the basic
necessities you need, it is really really extensive. I mean,
your ice tool and your crampons are just one of many,
many things that you need to have on just a
basic ice climb. But another thing that you have to
have are what it's called ice screws. And if you
(22:36):
have ever um done any rock climbing, Um, when you're
climbing up a rock, especially if it's a well traveled rock, um,
there's gonna be bolts in place in the rock and
you you know, clip onto those things and suspend yourself. Well,
when you're climbing up ice, that ice that you're climbing
might not have been there last year, or it's not
(22:57):
gonna be there three years from now, so and you're climbing.
You have to put in your own bolts and what
they've developed or what are called ice screws that are
exactly what they sound like. They're they're long screws that
you bore into the ice and then you clip your
carabine or two and um ballet from or at least
hang from. This is where it gets terrifying to me,
(23:19):
because it's ice. You know, apparently ice can be just
as strong as rock. But you know, I've had some
ice in my mouth before. Sure I can chew that
with my teeth, It's true. So it's a little bit
unnerving to me to think about screwing into ice and
(23:44):
supporting my body weight, which, of course I wouldn't be
up there like this. That'd be a death sentence. Right. Well, apparently,
if you ever want to get as physically fit as
you ever will be in your life, just start ice climbing. Well,
we would do it before you start ice climbing. Problem. Well, yeah,
you have to train for it. But I'm saying like,
if you're a nice climber, you're about in the peak
(24:08):
physical fitness that any human being is. Yes, I would
agree with that. Um, so you got your ice screws,
you've got your crampons, you've got your axe, you've got
all kinds of little spawn divots and do hickeys, you've
got your super cold weather gear, and you've got to
have that helmet because ice does chip away and fall
and you don't want to get clunked on the bean
(24:29):
when you're hanging off of a sheet of ice. Right,
And that's like another big difference between ice climbing and
rock climbing, or the overhead hazards are way more prevalent
with ice climbing them with rock climbing. I mean you
can still you know, a rock slide can happen, Little
rocks can fall off if um, you know, you go
for a ledge or something when you're rock climbing, like
(24:49):
debris can fall down, and it is a problem. But
with ice climbing, it's just a matter of fact of
the climb. There's going to be ice flying everywhere. Sometimes
way more ice comes off then you intended to um,
which we'll talk about in a little bit, but there's
going to be a lot of ice falling, so you
have to have a helmet when you're ice climbing, that's right.
(25:10):
You're gonna be doing this. You can do it kind
of anywhere in the world where there is ice on
a mountain. Plenty of places in North America. You can
go to Norway, you can go to Iceland, you can
go to the Alps in Europe. Grease kind of surprised me,
but I was just being kind of naive and dumb
with my geography. Of course, Greece has big mountains with
(25:34):
ice and snow. I just for some reason I was
thinking their mountains in Greece. Yeah, you think of like
olives and wine and stuff, you know, and then Mount
Olympus of course. Oh yeah, there's that. It's kind of
a famous one, right. I also saw Scotland actually has
some really um intense ice climb interesting. Yeah, and there's
plenty of places in the United States. There's actually an
(25:56):
ice climbing park called the ray Um that is has
an ice climbing competition every year where like the best
of the best, and actually, from what I understand, everybody
comes in and competes. Is it fake ice? I mean
not fake, but it's it's built. It's built, but it's
not like it's built on rocks. Like I think they
(26:16):
found a a spot in the world where they could
kind of grow ice. I'm not exactly sure how they
do it. I just saw that it's like human enabled basically,
Oh you need it's a garden house, right and cold temperatures.
There's some dude in bermuda shorts and a panama hat
and like dark socks up to his knees. Just with
(26:37):
this hose. Just go squirt that down for the next
three days, right stand there, Walter. Uh, there's different kinds
of ice though, and uh, when you're an experienced ice climber,
you can you can look at a face and kind
of know what you're getting into before you even come
close to it, depending on how it's laying there and
(26:57):
what color it is, how clear it is. Um. I
tried to get a read on what would be the
ideal ice, and I really couldn't quite suss that out.
This is what I saw, so, um, you want ice
that has has been around for a while, So probably
alpine ice, which started out as fallen snow. Snow that's falling,
(27:20):
because that creates different kind of ice. But there's a
big heavy snowfall that dumped on a mountain and then
the temperature is cooled and all of that snow started
to turn to ice, and as it did, um the
air got squeezed out of it by the heaviness of
the snow to begin with, but as the ice formed,
it should have as well, and then it bonds to
the actual mountain side, so it's real solid to begin with,
(27:45):
and then temperatures get around freezing maybe a little above
for about five consecutive days, and on that fifth or
sixth day of that kind of temperature, um the ice
should be just perfect for ice climbing because it takes
on the state of what's called plastic where your ice
pick just goes right in and it stays in and
(28:08):
it's you can just tell it's very satisfying. It there's
a lot of strength to it. But at the same time,
it's not like chipping into a rock because, like we said,
like one of the reasons you have to be so fit,
and you are so fit just by virtue of being
an ice climber as you expend a tremendous amount of
energy with each swing of your ice tool. Because if
(28:32):
you're working with just plastic ice, that's going to be
a pretty easy, satisfying climb. But that's a that's ideal,
that's not the norm most of the time. When you
swing that that pick and again you're on the side
of a glacier, say you're hanging on by your feet,
the fangs on the front of your feet, um, and
you are swinging above your head an axe that you're
(28:55):
hoping to get on the first try, just a really
good solid stick, but that very unlikely. Instead, you might
do three, four or five times to get a good
stick in there, and each one of those is expending
a lot of energy. And you're doing this for meters
and meters depending on how high this this ice climb
(29:16):
is um and it's it requires a tremendous amount of
energy and a lot of it is redundant um redundant effort,
having to swing that pick multiple times just to get
that one stick. Yeah, because my again my naivete thought, Man,
I want to go when it's thirty below zero because
(29:36):
I want that ice to be so frozen. I think so,
you'd think so. But the colder it gets, if it's
like really really below freezing, the ice might get brittle. Uh,
it might break off. And that's called dinner plating, I assume,
because ice pieces about the size of a dinner plate
(29:57):
will come falling off into your face. Yeah, you not
want that, man. No, So, like you said, you want
temperatures right at about freezing. Um, even a little bit
above freezing is is ideal. Yeah, but yeah, I mean
just right around there, not not too much above, because
then the ice turns into slush, and slush doesn't hold
(30:18):
you very well. So it's almost like the very first
step towards this long path towards slush is where the
ideal ice is. And I saw actually one reason why,
maybe even the only reason why, that dinner plating happens
when it's really cold, when ice becomes less stable when
it's really really cold, because I thought the same thing,
(30:38):
but um, it's because the colder it gets, the more
the ice shrinks. Well, if the ice is attached like
to the top of a cliff and the bottom of
a cliff, it can't physically shrink very well, right, it
doesn't have that shrink so instead it thins out. It
gets tense, So there's a tension in the ice and
when you hit it with your pick, it just shatters.
(31:01):
That's why you don't want it to be just ridiculously
cold out and have been for a while, because that
ice is far more tense because it's constricting under the cold.
That's right. Uh. And that alpine ice we were talking about,
is that really pretty blue ice that you see. Uh.
If ice is really really solid and climbable, it'll be
blue or blue green. Sometimes it might have a little
(31:23):
yellow to it because of the minerality to it. Uh. Really,
really white ice isn't great. Well, I mean it's not bad.
It's it's got air in it and it makes a
little bit easier to climb, but it gets a little
dicey with the screws. Yeah. And the reason why is
because that air that um can form when say, like
a waterfall freezes, and it's essentially a flash freeze. It
(31:45):
doesn't happen for a very long period of time. Yeah,
people climb those, dude. I've seen pictures climbing of Rosen waterfall.
It's yes, it's nuts. But the reason why, and you
can see it's it is very it's very opaque. Um,
it's very white. And the reason why it's because there's
a lot of air trapped in there. Same thing with
um when it's falling snow that's turning to ice, not
(32:06):
snow that was already fell and then turned to ice,
but it's turning to ice as it's falling. That traps
a lot of air in there too. And yeah, you
can get a pretty good you know, pick stick in there,
but it's not going to support you because it's inherently
less dense. It's less solid because there's so much air
trapped inside. That's right. Uh. And I don't think we
(32:26):
mentioned the chandelier ice. It's very pretty. Um, these are
icicles that have fused together, but it's not great for climbing.
It's doesn't hold the screws very well. Uh. And if
you're if you're an ice climber, you know your way
around all this stuff. You know where to head toward
your down there at the bottom looking at your route anyway, Um,
(32:47):
you know which way do I want to go to
get the best ice. But you can navigate most of
this stuff pretty well, and you know to stay away
from I mean, people still die doing it. Of course,
mistakes and accidents happen, but you know what you're getting into,
and you know what kind of ice. You're not gonna
just try and stab into a chandelier. No, but I
did see. Um, it's called reading the ice where you're
(33:09):
just standing there basically visually mentally, um, doing your climb,
going through it in your head. And there's plenty of
like you know, perennial ice sheets that aren't going anywhere
for you know, well for and for the next couple
of decades at least, but um, they've been there for
a really long time and people climb them. And then
once you climb them and you get a good pick
(33:30):
stick in there, when you pull your pick back out,
that stick is still there. So the people who follow
after you use the same things. Right, It's like a
allege or something in rock climbing. It stays there well,
so um that makes the climbing a lot a lot
more easy. Hum. Um. One of the coolest things about
(33:50):
free solo was and this was something I didn't know.
I kind of thought, like, you go to climb a
rock and you kind of just do your thing and
what route you think is best. But established places like
El Capitan, which is you know what this one focused on,
there are only certain ways you can even climb it,
and they're very well established routes. They're named and um,
(34:12):
you should see this, dude, You're gonna you're gonna love it. Okay,
I'll see you it's really I will, I will watch
it simultaneously. When you watch Uh, it's a wonderful life. Okay, Um,
but I would suggest if you don't know anything about
the story, you're not like googling into it, just watch
it because there are some there's some stress as to
(34:33):
what you think might happen if you don't know the
real stories, the real story I will, I liked. I'm like,
I'd like to go in fresh Okay, so um, but
what you're saying is is like there is a set way,
maybe a handful of different ways you can climb El Capitan.
Same thing with these climbs, but depending on whether this
(34:55):
is new ice that's not going to be there at
the end of the season because it's like a frozen waterfall.
It's gonna unfreeze and freezes differently every single time, every
single year year. Um, you may be the first person
to make this climb, and so you have to get
super inventive or it could be you know, one that's
been climbed by a bunch of people, and um, it's
a lot easier because you don't have to exert quite
(35:15):
as much energy. I saw, I saw, Um, you know,
one climb of the same grade. We'll talk about grades
in a second. Can be you know, can take an
hour or can I should say, not me, but can
take that? Will gad guy an hour? But one that's
been picked through already, Um, it will take him like
ten minutes. What fun is that I would forge my
(35:37):
own path? Yeah, I guess, and you can you could maybe,
I don't know. Actually you should probably just follow the
existing path. All right. Should we take another break? Yes?
We should. All right, let's do that and then we'll
talk a little bit about technique right after this. Alright,
(36:19):
So remember ice climbing also includes going up very gentle
slopes on glaciers at the top of the mountain. Like
basically when you're watching somebody, you're like, oh, they're just walking,
but it's there's ice that they're walking on, so it's
really hard to walk on. So there's actual techniques that
are involved in that level of ice climbing. Um. And
the first one is just flat footing, which is well,
(36:40):
you would just basically call it walking, but you're walking
with your feet kind of turned out like a duck
going along the ice with again with your mountaineering axe. UM,
to keep yourself from sliding down the mountain if you
start to slip. Yeah, and you may the French technique
is what it's also called. You may not eat and
be used in your acts at this point. But like
(37:02):
you said, it's just sort of like a duck walk.
If you look up, you're walking with your um. There's
a lot of stress on the inside part of your feet, right,
which is tough. And if you do this a lot, um,
it's tough on your ankles. You might want to switch
to something called side stepping. Um. That's exactly what it
sounds like. But you know there's an inherent risk there
(37:24):
because you're you're bringing those boots with those crampons which
are highly snagg able over each other, and it would
be very easy and tricky to snag one ft and
you don't want to do that. No, And not only that,
if you are smart, you're probably using a rope line
um that you're connected to, uh to keep you from
(37:46):
actually falling off of the mountain, So you're having to
step over that as well, or to step with that
connected to the front of your body. Um. Yeah, so
it's it's got to be extremely difficult to do. But again,
it's a lot easier than cutting like a foothold like
they used to do in the old timing days, like
oct oscar Exstein. I wonder people free solo ice They do, yes,
(38:10):
so yes, if you just have crampons and the pick axes.
Some people like climbing a waterfall. There might not be
anywhere to put screws in um and you just you
just use that. You use the axes above you and
the crampons uh in in front of you, and you
(38:30):
just climb up a waterfall. That's a form of ice climbing.
I think it's very rare. I think most people are
much more safety conscious and stop. Put in an ice screw,
you know, clip into that and then you know, move
up and we'll talk a little more about that in
a second. But I think that's the norm. But people
do free solo ice climb with just their tools and
(38:51):
their crampons. Yeah, and just like free solong on on
a rock. That's the that's the subset even of experience
rock climbers, right, because it's you know, one as they say,
one fall does it all? It's kookie, man, Yeah, it's
a nerve wracking one fault does it at all? That's good? Thanks? Uh,
(39:12):
then we need to talk about the German technique. This
is what I would do. Uh. And this is where
those front fangs come into play, because the Germans got
in there and they were like, I don't want to
walk like a duck, I don't want to sidestep, I
don't want to look goofy. Why don't you just kick
into that thing and climbate like a ladder? Yeah, And
I think it's depending on what type of um, what
(39:36):
what type of technique you're using. It very much depends
on the degree or the angle of the terrain. Yeah,
Like you can't front point if that you know, there's
not enough of an angle in front of you. So
by the time your front pointing that things that like
a fifties sixty degree angle by now and then onward
to nine degree plus. Yeah. And I also saw a
(39:58):
lot of pictures of p people using too, That's all
I saw. But that's not always the way though. No.
And in fact, Debbie basically describes like as the basic
technique that you're just using one ax so that you're
forming a triangle with your body with your feet at
(40:20):
about shoulder with the part beneath you, and then your
acts like in the center above you forming a triangle.
Um which I didn't see anybody. She is right, she
knows a lot more than we do about that. But um, yeah,
I didn't see anyone using that. Everyone was using technique
that she called um uh traction, which is basically what
(40:41):
I described. You've got two axes, one just above each shoulder,
and your feet are shoulder at the part, and you're
just climbing up one bit at a time like a
like a human fly. Yeah, I would want to I
want three. I would grow another arm and I would
have three axes in that right, I would just stay
(41:03):
at the lodge. Oh man, A little hot cocoa, maybe
some whiskey. Whiskey and hot cocoa. I don't know how
that would be nice? Fire? Yes, what else? I think
that's it? And maybe um yeah, no, that's it. That's
all you need? Flannel body suit? Uh yeah, I was
(41:24):
gonna say, really nice like sweater. Sure yeah, maybe some meatballs?
Sure this sounds great. Oh fonn do? How about that?
There you go, Chuck, I can always go for some
fonn do. I haven't done had that in a while. Um,
have you ever had roclette? I don't think so what
(41:46):
is so Umi's aunt and uncle got us into it.
It's like the seventies thing in the vein of fawn do.
But it's like this this cook top, but and you
end up in bed with another woman. It's this cook
took up that you cook like vegetables or you know, um,
whatever you want. I mean, typically it's like mushrooms or
(42:06):
onions or something like that. And then just underneath there's
another heating element and you put hunks of cheese typically
green air or um, I think gree air usually uh,
and then you melt it and then you put it
all together on your plate. So it's just melted, gooey,
awesome cheese over like you know, freshly um saute vegetables.
(42:29):
It's really really good, and it's also fun because you're
just sitting there cooking, talking and everything. It's just like
a good little social what's it called seventies dinner? Recolette
And originally reclett was a big wheel of cheese pushed
close to a fire so that it was kind of melty,
and you just walk up with hunks of bread and
like you know, scoop out hunks of gooey cheese with it. Um.
(42:51):
This is like kind of a like the Milton Bradley
version of Raclette that I'm talking about. But is the
reclette the actual cheese or this you? I think it
was originally the cheese, but now it's both the cheese
and the unit. Okay, look at there, you'll see what
you're talking about. Yeah, I can quite picture it, right, So, yeah,
it is kind of tough to describe in my own defense,
(43:12):
but it's it's really cool. It's so is the idea
that the juices dropped down into the cheese or is it?
Why is it even together? Then? Just efficiency? You got
one one unit? All right. I guarantee whoever invented that
never envisioned two dudes in talking about it calling it
(43:34):
a unit. You know. Yeah, no way, man, that looks good.
It is. It is good. We'll have to have a
Reclette party sometime. Fantastic. You're gonna love it too. Uh So,
where were we here? We're talking about reclette, right, but
were we climbing high up an ice waterfall? Uh? We?
(43:55):
I think we're talking about the techniques, and we both
agreed that we would want at least two acts. As
you said, you would grow a third arm for a
third ax, but you're using both feet and both arms
in what's called the um the traction technique attraction technique.
You're looking to not dinner plate, so you're looking for
the strongest ice. If it's convex, that's probably not a
(44:17):
good place to to throw that ax into. It'll probably
shatter and dinner plate, although occasionally you might dinner plate
and find a very much stronger piece of ice underneath
that ice. Yeah, and so um Debbie suggests if you are,
you know the best way to prevent dinner plating is
to just kind of not use your full force if
(44:39):
you can swinging that pick and uh, maybe kind of
testing to see what kind of resistance you get. Also,
you want to listen out for sounds to hollow sounds
or not good vibrations in the ice when you swing
your your tool into it not good either. You don't
want to trust that ice, So you're listening out, you're
feeling out, um, and if it looks like the area
(45:02):
is gonna dinner plate or just chip away or fall
away or fracture, um, sometimes it is best to just
hit it and get rid of it and then find
that better ice underneath. If you think the ice is
thick enough, right, and you know you are using your
arms to be sure, But like with any kind of
climbing sport, most of the work is being done by
your legs. Yeah. Yeah, you want most of the weight
(45:26):
on your legs for sure. Angle no no, no, no no,
But that does happen. So you know you're talking about
one fall, does it all? With ice climbing, that is
pretty true unless you have like a good repelling system
going on, uh, and you're clipped into some good ice
crews that have a good purchase into the ice. If
(45:47):
you fall, um, you're going to be in big trouble
because usually when you fall while your ice climbing, a
lot of ice falls with you. So even if the
impact with the ground doesn't hurt you, something else falling
on you might. So don't forget. Your tools are really
really they're as sharp as they look. And um, I
was reading about the ray competition and how I think
(46:08):
within the last couple of years, Um, there was some
guy who lacerated his arm so badly and kept climbing
that they had to shovel out the bloody snow at
the foot of the climb. That's unsightly. No one wants
to see that, and he wasn't the only one to
do that, Like some guy had to go to the hospital.
If you wor it might have been the same guy
with another laceration. So the tools are really dangerous. And
that's a really big difference from what I understand between
(46:30):
rock climbing and ice climbing. If you rock climb, falling
is it's not great, but it's not unheard of. You
might even say it's kind of a common thing to
fall during rock climbing, and the chances are you're probably
going to survive it with a recoverable injury, if you're
injured at all. With ice climbing, it's very infrequent that
(46:51):
people fall because when you do fall ice climbing, it's
a really big deal and you can you can be
seriously hurt or killed from that fall. And I mean,
look at those icicles. Yeah. There was a woman named
Um Sue Not who was a premier ice climber. Um.
She and a woman named Carrie McCarry McNeil, another premier
(47:11):
ice climber. They were lost. As far as I know,
they've never been found. Back in two thousands, six m
Mount Foraker in Denali National Park, in Alaska and Mount
Forker has something called the Infinite um. Oh, I can't believe.
I don't remember the name of it. Um fang. I
think man pretty good band name. I know it's a
(47:36):
great it's a great name for it. But um, anyway,
they were lost on this. It's like one of the
one of the hardest, most difficult climbs ice climbs in
the world. And these two like the kind where you
have to like, um, you know, camp out on the
side of a mountain over multiple days and nights to
like make these climbs. This is like some serious stuff
(47:59):
and um, these two were perfectly capable of doing it.
They just happened to get caught in some bad weather
and have never been heard from again. But this is
in two thousand six and eight years before in a competition.
It might have been at ray Uh. Sue Not was
climbing and she was injured when she fell and some
ice speared her. Wow, yeah it does. It's called the
(48:24):
Infinite Spur. Yeah. So, um they were climbing the Infinite
Spurring got lost. In two thou six was a bad
year for ice climbing deaths in general. Not only were
Sue Not and Karen McNeil lost, but a guy named
Harry Burger, Okay, well he was lost in just like
(48:44):
a routine training practice. That was just a freak accident.
And I read about it and they said there was
no amount of training, there is no amount of preparation,
there's no amount of caution that could have saved him.
This was just a Greek accident that happened. But he
was trapped under ice, like a hundred and fifty tons
of it fell on him. He was while he was
(49:06):
climbing it. And I mean this guy was world class
from what I read. So we're soon not and Karen
McNeil and these are just this is a really really
dangerous extreme sport. Yeah, I mean that's that's the thrill
with any extreme sport deep down, as you know you
could die that day. You don't want to, but that's
part of what makes you know, that adrenaline kick up
(49:29):
to such a level. Yeah that, uh, that these people
do those things. Yeah, it's true. And I mean, you know,
you're in the mountains and there's a lot of chance
for things like avalanches to happen, and um ice can
fall on you. You can hurt yourself with your tool
you can lose your tool, you can get caught in
a blizzard. Um, the wind can get so bad that
(49:49):
it can blow you off the mountain. There's just a
lot of things, and there's definitely you know, precautions you
can take, like, um, if you were an ice climber,
you have an avalanche beakin with you. It's just part
of your gear. You have a first aid kit with you,
that's part of your gear too. You know how to
use your ice cruise and you're clipped in everywhere. Um,
there's a lot of precautions you can take. But it
(50:10):
is an inherently dangerous sport for sure, of course, and
you always need to remember that you've got to get
back down unless you're like being helicoptered out or something,
which I don't even know if it's a thing. It's
probably a thing for the richies. But you know you're
going down as well, and you, uh, you gotta plan
out your day so that you're doing that safely and
(50:31):
at the right time of day. And um, you know
they always say that even hiking downhill can be tougher
on you than hiking up hill, right, because you're already
worn out at this point and that's when mistakes can happen.
So uh, and we keep saying experience ice climbers. I
guess you always have to do something for the first time,
but it seems a little redundant to say experienced ice climber,
(50:54):
you know, right, yeah, yeah, you're definitely doing it for
the first multiple times with a very knowledgeable guy who's
telling you how to do everything, and you're probably already
an experienced rock climber. I doubt if you start off
with ice climbing, it would have would probably be really weird.
I wonder if anyone ever has, you know, like I
never climbed a rock before, but look at that frozen waterfall.
(51:15):
But one thing I'm not I would like to be
able to do this. I don't know if I ever will.
But one thing that really caught my attention was you know,
when you're fueling up in the morning before your ice climb,
you want to eat um. What I saw was like,
think the Trucker's special breakfast at a diner pr and eggs,
and I could I could get into that kind of
sport where that's what you eat, and they're like, bring
(51:37):
food that doesn't freeze, so don't bring bananas, bring Oreo
cookies instead. I was like, I really like this ice climbing. Wow.
You know the It's sadly not there anymore because Atlanta
has just really changed in the past fifteen years. But
there used to be a place called Austin Avenue Buffet.
I don't know if you ever went there. It was
a long long time ago. It's on obviously Austin Avenue,
(51:59):
which is not kind of chey, but this place was
a great dumpy dive and they served food and they
had in the mornings, they had the painter Special, which
was eggs, bacon, toast, and a tall Boy PBR. I
thought it was kind of funny. Wow was the food good? No, okay,
(52:19):
I'm swimming. I didn't eat. I just drink. I guess
I was in there in the morning for eggs painting.
It was pretty cool place. So so there was one
other thing I wanted to mention. Two. There's a very
controversial side to um ice climbing. The ice climbing community
and the rock climbing community are frequently one and the same,
but also separate in some ways. And one of the
(52:41):
ways they are separate and is that sometimes ice climbers
will say hey, I'm I'm gonna practice, but I don't
feel like driving up to the mountains. Um, so I'm
gonna use my tools on a rock climb, which is
called dry tooling, and it has all sorts of negative
effects on a rock climbing course. Um. It can chip
(53:02):
away ledges and all sorts of stuff. It leaves scars
on the rocks. It's it's rock climbers do not like that.
So there's kind of like a little bit of a
civil war in the climbing community between people who um
rock climbing people who dry tool climb and uh get
the impression. Dry toolers are not very well liked and
(53:24):
sounds kind of dirty too, dry tool Okay, UM, oh,
one other thing, since we're just throwing stuff out at
this point, I ran across the website called jyvass anchors
dot com and it basically is just this blog that
makes fun of people's ridiculously dangerous and ill advised anchors
(53:45):
for their climbs, like you know, things they're um they're
they're um connected into with their their carabineers. And all
that was verbatim the description of the blog, including all
the us I believe it. You do not all, Right,
listen to ice climbing once and for all, shall we? Yeah,
(54:07):
if you want to know more about ice climbing, there's
a lot to go read and then try and make
sure you do it safely. So there you go, and
in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this Gifted and talented. Uh, this is great. Hey, guys,
I'm a Gifted and Talented GT specialist at an elementary
(54:28):
school and my students range from kindergarten to fifth grade.
We have an ongoing side project that was inspired by you.
We have two posters where we've created a list of
band names and song names and someone here's something they
say that'd be a good band name, I write it down.
They do the same thing for songs. They also have
decided the genre of some of these bands, which is
your job. Uh. They even took it a step further
(54:48):
like the GT kids often do and decided they need
to create a synopsis of the songs when they think
of one. I'm just picturing kindergarteners doing this and it
delights me to know. End Really, So, here's some of
the band names and what genre used. Mirrors not bad
Mr ma'am, I love that one. That's a great one. Yes,
(55:11):
she said, that's a pop group, ancient falls, she said,
either well, she said, alternative or maybe jazz. But you
are the authority, dumb and dangerous. Ah, that sounds like
an old man band. Okay. And then the loud mouths
or just loud mouths, which she said is clearly punk
(55:33):
it is or um yeah, punk, post punk, alternative loud
mouths yea. She closes with this, knowing these kids they
will take on one of these band names one day
and become the most successful band ever seen. My students
are absolutely amazing, so I'm not surprised by anything they do.
I enjoy listening while I'm completing all the hours of
(55:54):
paperwork apt to do. Keep up the good work and
big big shout out to Angie kind of and heritage
elementary gifted and talented kids. That's awesome. Thanks Ms Cannell
and your class for writing in those are awesome. What
was my favorite? Chuck again, Mr ma'am, that's a good one.
(56:14):
That's so good. Uh. If you want to get in
touch with this, like Ms Cannell did and her class,
you can send us an email. Wrap it up. Spank
it on the bottom and send it off to Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
more podcasts for my heart radio because at the iHeart
(56:36):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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