Ice climbing is a sport that takes peak physical fitness, honed skill and nerves of steel. Still fancy giving it a go? Let Will Gadd, one of the world's top ice climbers, talk you through the basics...
There’s little doubt that ice climbing is not for the faint of heart. It’s a physically demanding sport that combines the strength of weight lifting with the agility of yoga and the endurance of running a marathon. If that’s not enough to convince you, there’s that pesky hanging hundred metres off the ground with only slippery ice to hold onto.
There are two kinds of ice climbing: One where the challenge is to get to the top of a frozen entity, such as a glacier, while the second is scaling water ice, which is usually something that runs freely in summer - such as a waterfall.
No matter which kind you choose, climbing to the summit always involves some special equipment. The basic stuff used for ice climbing turns the athlete into a combination medieval knight and grizzly bear, explains Will Gadd, one of the world’s top ice climbers.
“We have things like a helmet and protective clothing and gloves to deal with the cold,” he says. “And then we have claws: There’s the crampons that stick out the front of your boots and allow you to kick into the ice and get a solid grip and then we have really big claws for your hands, which are the ice axes that have about a 15-centimetre blade on them that we slam into the ice.”
The ice tools are also as high-tech as they come, with carbon fibre being used in their construction to ensure they are both strong and light. The boots an ice climber wears are a cross between ice skates and Nordic ski boots and are lightweight and extremely warm.
Getting to the top of a frozen waterfall is a combination of aid and free climbing. In aid climbing, the participants hang onto the safety equipment that’s put into the rock, whereas free climbing uses ropes only as a safety net.
"The first rule of extreme sports: If you die, you lose.”
“In ice climbing, you do use the claws and weaponry for upward progress, but you don’t hang on the rope of the ice screws,” explains Gadd who uses Alberta, Canada as his base. “The ice screws are tubular screws that are secured into the ice and then you clip your ropes in them. They make sure that if you fall off you don’t die, which is the first rule of extreme sports: If you die, you lose.”
Christian Pondella/Red Bull Contentpool
The way it works is pretty simple. The first climber goes up and fastens screws into the ice and then clips the ropes into them as he or she climbs. Once up 50 to 80 metres, the first climber puts in what is called a belay.
“It’s two or three ice screws that are all tied together and then the rope is clipped into them. It is very, very solid - you could hang a truck off it,” Gadd insists.
“The second climber goes up and takes all the ice screws out on the way and gets to the belay and leads the other up. So, that’s how we get the rope up and how it all works.”
Gadd also has an instruction video called “Ice & Mixed Climbing - Modern Technique’ available for those who want to learn from one of the best - it can be found on his website.
Although the mechanics of ice climbing is pretty much standard, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s always business as usual or that the climbers become nonchalant as they ascend their frozen challenges.
In fact, Gadd insists the sport never ceases to amaze him.
“No matter how many times or what I’ve climbed, it always strikes me as unlikely when I step off the ground that it actually works,” he says. “If you think about it, it’s just like climbing a hockey rink standing on its end.”
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