Roadside Ice
MVP:
Connor Chilcott—The guide for this trip trip was amazing. He was super chill, yet covered everything that we needed to know to confidently climb this frozen waterfall.
Climb Review:
Roadside Ice was really fun to climb.
There was varied terrain that made climbing really fun—deep ice, shallow ice, and mixed terrain.
Even though it had not snowed in an entire month, the ice was of great quality, which gave us lots of confidence when climbing.
What I Learned:
I have to keep my legs spread with the ice pick being the top of the triangle and my feet representing the bottom two points. Because at first I did not do so, the crampons ended up cutting my ski pants.
Ski pants weren’t very good for ice climbing as it flared out too much. If I climb more ice in the future, I’ll get some pants that look more like climbing pants.
My crampons ended up being slightly dislodged and it made me feel less secure in my legs. This threw off my mental game and the last two climbs ended up being not as fun for me.
When swinging the ice axe, the motion resembles darts. It’s all in the elbow and wrist—not the arms!
I fit into a Scarpa Inverno 11.5 boots! I guess Scarpa boots (or maybe mountaineering boots in general) are sized wide.
Friends Made:
Alba Beller—She was my fellow classmate. She had a great positive attitude and I felt lucky to learn about ice climbing with her.
Fears Overcome:
Climbing Ice—I found ice climbing to be much easier than rock climbing, at least for waterfalls like the one I climbed today. This is because almost every surface is where you can put the ice axe and boots, so it’s more about just keeping a flow, and less about searching for the hand/feet holds.
What Happened?
We arrived at the end of the road, which served as the parking lot for this climb and put on our mountaineering boots and crampons. We then walked to the waterfall, which took less than 5 minutes.
Connor then climbed and set up our anchor, and Alba and I climbed the route. We repeated this a few times, as we raised the difficulty by climbing thin ice or climbing with one ice axe.
On the second to the last climb, I ended up losing my footing while climbing (this was due to my crampon being misaligned). I held on with the axes and recovered. A few minutes later, I ended up losing one of my axes. I thought I’d have to climb with a single axe, but Connor climbed up and handed me my axe. Because I didn’t trust my left feet, I didn’t enjoy the climbing and was constantly worried. Still, I finished climbing this route successfully.
One thing about ice climbing is that the feet placement is ultra important. Whenever I could find natural divots, I placed my feet in there and it made me feel secure, but there were definitely times where I didn’t trust my footing, but kept on going anyways. I think with practice, I’ll learn to trust the less steady feeling foot holds and climb more confidently.
As for the axe placements, I felt like a natural and figured it out with my first climb. A good axe placement just sounds really good, and later on, I learned to trust less good axe placements. One thing to note is that my axe never slipped today.
The last climb was a 130’ climb that really tired me out. My arms were a little tired already, and so it felt like a slog, versus the first few climbs where I felt like I was in a groove. After that climb, we all packed up and headed back to our cars. We had started climbing around 9am, and we were done around 2:30pm. I think if we had the maximum class size, we would not have been able to climb so many routes, and I feel very lucky that it was just Alba and me in the course.