Transition from Sport to Ice

[SnowByrd]

I think I already have a pretty good idea of what people are going to say, but since I know nothing about ice climbing, I'll as it anyways.

 

Is there a natural transition from sport climbing to ice climbing? It seems that they are really nothing alike at all and the things you learn when starting out in sport won't really help you when attempting to learn ice other than the basics. I've been warned away from ice climbing by several people....any reason for this?

 

If I wanted to learn to ice climb, do I need to be a really experienced sport climber? WHat are hte conditions and season around the PNW for ice climbing? How does a person actually begin to learn to ice climb?

 

Thanks in advance for all the answers....

[Dru]

Sport and ice are really nothing alike. Sport climbing is about a variety of difficult movements in relative safety; ice climbing is about suffering. You don't have to be crazy to ice climb but you must harbour masochistic impulses.

 

PNW ice sucks, and isnt around for very long.

 

Ice climbing is really spendy. Boots, tools, crampons =$1000. Warm dry clothes = another thousand. Dryrope = $150. Screws = $500.

 

To learn to ice climbing - practice by locking yourself in your freezer for an hour at a time. Then drop frozen food from a height of 2 feet onto your head. Then simulate the after ice experience by visiting a redneck bar and drinking 5 pitchers.

 

To learn - borrow as much of the gear as you can to limit the spendiness, and get some patient experienced person to drag you out seracing on Baker or up a fall neve climb like the Ob Rock. Here is the beta:

 

[fern]

If I wanted to learn to ice climb, do I need to be a really experienced sport climber?

what's an experienced sport climber? There's not much objective hazard to sport climbing - that's the whole point of why it IS sport climbing. Ice climbing is ALL about objective (and subjective) hazard. If you are not snart you can easily be krushed.

 

WHat are hte conditions

cold

 

and season around the PNW for ice climbing?

winter

 

How does a person actually begin to learn to ice climb?

same as anything else - read as much as you can on it, find someone to show you. I hired a guide for a day with some friends.

 

here is a good link: http://www.tradgirl.com/climbing_faq/ice_climbing.htm

[snoboy]

I think I told you this one already, SnowByrd, but here is a quote from my mom about iceclimbing (more or less.)

 

"It was the coldest, wettest, most boring thing I have ever done in the mountains."

[SnowByrd]

I think I told you this one already, SnowByrd, but here is a quote from my mom about iceclimbing (more or less.)

 

"It was the coldest, wettest, most boring thing I have ever done in the mountains."

 

But I'm not your mom.....

 

Thanks fern....that link was helpful.

[snoboy]

I helped fern pay for that guide, and I must say it was one of the most worthwhile things I have ever spent money on in my whole climbing "career"...

 

Yeah, I know you are not my mom, SB, she was way hardcore compared to all of you. Certainly more core than me.

[SnowByrd]

I helped fern pay for that guide, and I must say it was one of the most worthwhile things I have ever spent money on in my whole climbing "career"...

 

Yeah, I know you are not my mom, SB, she was way hardcore compared to all of you. Certainly more core than me.

 

sb, we ALL aspire to be (like) your mum

[Don_Serl]

Is there a natural transition from sport climbing to ice climbing? It seems that they are really nothing alike at all and the things you learn when starting out in sport won't really help you when attempting to learn ice other than the basics. I've been warned away from ice climbing by several people....any reason for this?

 

It must be admitted that sport-climbing tends to be warm, controlled, and safe, while ice climbing looks like it's cold, chaotic, and dangerous. I'd say that's looking at the surface only.

1. as Rockies winter climbing legend Jim Elzinga told me many years ago, if you're getting cold, you're doing something wrong. I learned something important that day! little excuse, these days, with superb clothing and footwear...

2. there's quite a bit more "going on" ice climbing than sport climbing, but if you can build a gear belay and if you have the rudiments of how to protect a gear pitch (especially how to sling placements and rope-handle to minimize cluster-fucks), you can learn readily how to control the chaos. even if your experience is limited to all-bolt routes (incl belays), if you're "clean" in your ropehandling, you're started OK.

3. frozen waterfalls and gullies are definitely more dangerous places than bolted sport-crags, but it's not beyond most climbers to learn how to think about situations and judge winter conditions. perhaps the hardest thing to do is to overcome the "just try it" attitude that usually goes with sport-climbing; the consequences of failure are usually limited to whanging off a few times, lowering, pulling the ropes, and heading home disappointed.

you've gotta be able to listen to the little voices in your head on ice routes, and on the approaches to them. not paranoia, just good sense. the climb can't go away, and you can always come back...

 

as for the actual movement and kinesthetics, the two disciplines are very close. you need to husband your strength in both. you need to get as much weight as possible onto your feet in both, sometimes/often thru uses of imaginative body positions. it's absolutely key that you get your body centre-of-mass under your leading ice tool, just as you MUST pivot your c/o/m under the biggest handhold on an overhanging sport route, and keep it close to the crag. appropriate shifts of body weight before, during, and after movement are the marks of mastery in both.

[btw, i'm not strong enuf to be a good sport-climber, but i do fine on 5+/6- ice, just cuz of spending 30 years learning and applying the above skills...]

 

If I wanted to learn to ice climb, do I need to be a really experienced sport climber? WHat are hte conditions and season around the PNW for ice climbing? How does a person actually begin to learn to ice climb?

 

if you really want to learn to ice climb, find people who are ice climbers, and go do it with them. Borrow gear, even boots and crampons (it IS expensive)! steal every piece of technique you can from those better than you - just IMITATE them, and see how it works/feels! ask questions - NEVER make assumptions. get your mentor to critique EVERYTHING about your climbing, especially the quality and "convenience" of your screw placement and MOST especially what your body positioning is/was like. LISTEN, and try again. read books before you go, and try just a thing or two new every time you go out. make a pest of yourself, and keep doing it till you're getting happy placing screws, and eventually leading.

[by FAR the hardest part of ice climbing is getting gear on lead!]

 

now, i'm not saying ANY of this will work for you - maybe you're not a very good sport-climber (and/or just too inexperienced) and you don't have much skill to transfer, or maybe you don't have the kinesthetic sense required to minimize power output on steep ground, or maybe your head-space isn't the type to stay controlled in complicated, potentially dangerous situations, but you won't know till you try. if it doesn't work for you, blow it off and move on. if it does, welcome - you're gonna have some ASTONISHING days mixed into the interminable waits for conditions to come in!

[not to mention all that beer!!!]

 

someone suggested heading to the seracs on the coleman glacier on baker - that's a favorite "training ground", almost a "sport" in its own right. i get down there a few weekends every autumn; PM me and join in...

 

cheers,

[SnowByrd]

Wow! That response might just be the most informative and helpful thing I've seen on this site! I appreciate your taking the time to interpret my questions in the way a newbie would ask them (like I don't even know what the Hell to ask) and explain your answers in a way that I could understand them. Thank you for taking the time to actually read the post and respond with answers that I can use. Thats rare on here. You can bet your left nut that I'll definitely take you up on your offer to join you

 

Thanks Again!

[catbirdseat]

You can have a lot of fun top roping those seracs at Baker. They can be really challenging. Waterfall ice can be up to 90 degrees, but seracs are often overhanging. Of course the overhanging ones are the wettest. It can be like climbing in a shower.

[fenderfour]

And damn good fun.

[TBay]

 

A Developed skill/knowledge of rope management and 'honed' forearm and back muscles is about the only baggage you'll take when making the transition.

 

you will need to develop a whole new state of mind especially when the "screamin' barfies" hit!

[ken4ord]

Snowbyrd as for ice and sport climbing there are only few things are similar or crossover. I think where sport climbing transfer over the most is in mix climbing and steep aerated ice, where it is more hooking and balance. Hooking is placing your picks on ice or rock rather than swinging them, it is like reaching for a hold and placing your hands in the right postion to grab and pull on that hold. Ice climbing is a love hate thing, either you hate it or you love it, and if you love it there will be days where you hate it. Most women I have met hate it, just because of circulation issues trying to stay warm, but that shouldn't discourage you because there are a lot of women who do enjoy the sport.

 

For the most part poeple gradually transition into climbing ice. Most start on lower angle slabs and some people take years before actually getting on vertical terrain, besides toproping. In rock climbing a vertical wall can be easy to quite hard, in ice vertical terrain will most always feel hard. as suggested already the best option is probably taking a course where they will have all the equipment you will need and you won't have make big investment right off the back. Or find somebody that you can borrow gear from, but that is usually quite difficult to do.

 

To prepare for ice climbing I hit the weights in the gym, get burly, you'll need it. I usually start with 20-30 minutes on the stairmaster to start off. Then I do dumbell simulated tool swings, LH swing 10-15 overhead using the mirror to try and swing into the same spot, then RH same thing, repeat each arm3 times and do three sets, it will give you a good burn. Pulldown 3 sets of 15. Tri extensions on the pull down 3 sets of 15. Arm raises front and side 3 sets of 15. Bicep curls 3 sets 15. Row for a bit and then hit the stairmaster again. I try and do this regularly for 2 months prior.

 

Most people will say the ice sucks here, I have had only one season here and New England was way better, but there is ice around here to climb, and the weather is much more forgiving here. Good Luck.

[Alpinfox]

Waterfall ice can be up to 90 degrees...

 

Waterfall ice can be > 90 degrees.

[J_Fisher]

I don't think being burly, at least in the weightlifting sense, is important to climbing ice. I think a strong background in rock climbing, sport or clean gear, will definitely make the transition to ice, at least following ice, a lot smoother. My wife is a pretty good rock climber and followed WI5+ her third time out no problem. And she can do about 2 pull-ups, maybe 3 on a good day. But leading ice is the real game, and the only way to get good at that is to go out and do it, preferably starting very slowly. Lots of gear climbing, esp. alpine rock, is probably the best preparation, but leading ice is a whole new set of problems.

[ken4ord]

I don't think being burly, at least in the weightlifting sense, is important to climbing ice.

I wasn't saying that is the only thing you need, but in my opinion climbing rock is much easier that ice climbing, physically. Doing some weight training before the season starts makes the transition a lot easier. You don't need to bulk yourself up like a gorilla, but training your muscle to repeatedly: swing ice axes overhead, carry extra 10lbs of gear give or take some, climb steep snow slopes to approach climbs, screw and unscrew ice pro, and kicking front points all day long makes the transition from rock to ice much easier.

[J_Fisher]

If you've got basic rock climbing fitness (follow 5.9-5.10?) I think that's all you need. But I suppose if you have no base lifting weights might help. If you have weak calves then calf raises would help too. But personally, I don't lift weights, I've never done those "ice climbing" workouts recomended in the mags, and seem to do just fine.

 

I agree that "grovel fitness" (schlepping a pack up unpleasant terrain) is pretty important.

[RuMR]

.... in my opinion climbing rock is much easier that ice climbing, physically.

 

So how hard on rock do you climb vs ice? If you're only climbing 5.2 this may be a true statement...conversely if you're only climbing WI2 this is not true...

[fenderfour]

From tradgirl.com:

 

From: Pedro Espina

 

To find out if ice climbing is for you,

 

1. Ask, read, and loose as much sleep as possible wondering what style of ice gear is right for you.

 

2. Bring you VISA card to your closest climbing store and spend all of next year's disposable income on equipment that somebody in rec.climbing recommended based on hearsay.

 

3. Hide the gear at home and try to control the fear that the thought of "your wife finding out that you just spend $3K that you didn't have" will bring to your heart.

 

4. Using a 10 lbs. frozen sea bass, smash the backside your fingers until you can't hold the frozen carcass any longer.

 

5. In front of an open refrigerator, strip to your underwear, place 10 or 12 ice cubes around your testicles, poor a gallon of cold water over your head, and repeat "Man... This is f*cking great!".

 

6. Tie yourself to a massive object just under the balconies of your local retirement home, display a sign that reads "Safe my future... Reduce Social Security benefits now!", and try to survive the barrage of large hurling objects coming your way.

 

7. Ask your neighbor to tie his Rottweiler with a shoelace at the other side of a 4 foot fence. Smack the dog a couple of times and repeat "If the string breaks, the fence will hold him back... the fence will hold... the fence will hold..."

 

8. Call-in thick Friday morning. Jump in the car with a couple of guy with questionable personal hygiene and drive for 13 hours strait. Get our of the car, realize that there is no ice to be climbed and return home feeling still exited about the prospects for ice climbing the next weekend.

 

9. Find out, from your new friends, that half of the gear that you bought in step #2 is really worthless and that "...only 'Posers' buy that stuff".

 

and finally,

 

10. Over a romantic dinner, tell your wife that she will be on-her-own for Thanksgiving, X-mas, New Year's, Martin Luther King Day, and Presidents' Day, because you will be driving "up-north" with "the guys".

 

If you can satisfy the requirements stated above, ice climbing may be for you. In that case see http://www.erols.com/espina/Climbing/ for some inspiration.

[SnowByrd]

But I don't have testicles or a wife...I'm a girl! The rest probably applies however....

[Alpinfox]

You have a 10lb frozen sea bass?

[ken4ord]

Hey Fender4 not I am pretty sure all the wife and testicle parts won't work for Snowbyrd.

[SnowByrd]

You have a 10lb frozen sea bass?

 

No, but it'd be easier to get than a wife or testicles

[Alpinfox]

 

You want a testicle? I can get you a testicle, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a testicle by 3 o'clock this afternoon.

[SnowByrd]

never said I wanted a wife OR a testicle...now about that frozen sea bass...if I get it, you wanna do the pounding of the knuckles? I'm finally scabbed over from the weekend