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How Ice Climbing Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, people in Vancouver and Portland's we're coming to see you,
0:05
Speaker 1: uh in March. Okay, did I step on you? No? No,
0:09
Speaker 1: I stepped on you, I think. Man. All right, well
0:11
Speaker 1: this is as clunky as we usually are. Uh, we
0:14
Speaker 1: are going to be coming to those two fair cities
0:16
Speaker 1: that I learned don't have direct flights yesterday and I
0:20
Speaker 1: can't wait regardless, So we're gonna be in Vancouver on Sunday,
0:24
Speaker 1: March twenty nine at the Chance Center. That's right. We're
0:27
Speaker 1: kicking it up a notch there, so we need your support, yeah,
0:29
Speaker 1: for real. And then the next day we're really kicking
0:31
Speaker 1: it up a notch maybe two. In Portland. We're gonna
0:34
Speaker 1: be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March that's right,
0:38
Speaker 1: and we need your support there to Portland because uh again,
0:42
Speaker 1: these are bigger venues. We're giving it a whorld. Don't
0:45
Speaker 1: don't put egg on our faces for God's sake. Yeah. Yeah,
0:50
Speaker 1: So you could get all sorts of information, you can
0:52
Speaker 1: buy tickets, everything you need to go to s Y
0:54
Speaker 1: s K live dot com and we'll see you in March.
0:58
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of I
1:00
Speaker 1: Heart Radios. How stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
1:09
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there,
1:13
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry Um abominable snowman rolling, sorry, abominable snow
1:21
Speaker 1: person rolling. I think she's more of a Burger meister,
1:24
Speaker 1: Meister Burger, Do you think so? Yeah? I guess you're
1:27
Speaker 1: absolutely right, Chuck. Who would be the abominable snowman of
1:31
Speaker 1: the three of us? I think clearly me. Do you
1:34
Speaker 1: think so, I'm the most horrific? Yes? But your um,
1:39
Speaker 1: your attitudes, your general view on life is very much
1:45
Speaker 1: not like that abominable snowman. Well, I'm fairly likable too.
1:49
Speaker 1: I'm sort of like the Harry and the Henderson's big
1:51
Speaker 1: foot that's right, scary looking but soft on the inside. Okay,
1:57
Speaker 1: so then Jerry's John Lithgow and I'm one of the
2:00
Speaker 1: trees in a scene. Okay, what was John liftgo? But
2:05
Speaker 1: I missed that Harry and the Henderson, So I just
2:09
Speaker 1: got confused. I do remember him being hearing the Henderson's
2:13
Speaker 1: But because of what we're talking about today, I thought
2:16
Speaker 1: you were making a reference to the Stallone. Uh what
2:22
Speaker 1: was that movie where he was like a climber. It
2:25
Speaker 1: wasn't No, that was the troll to movie face off.
2:28
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I know what you're talking about. But
2:30
Speaker 1: wasn't John liftgaw in that I think so. But actually
2:34
Speaker 1: the big twist to all this is I wasn't making
2:36
Speaker 1: it Harry and the Henderson's reference. I was making a
2:38
Speaker 1: raising Caine reference. Oh good lord, this is all the rails. Cliffhanger, right, cliffhanger.
2:46
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, yeah, yeah yeah, and John Lull
2:48
Speaker 1: was in it boom yeah. And it was stillone yeah,
2:52
Speaker 1: you know, from the master filmmaker, Rennie Harlan. I like
2:56
Speaker 1: Renny Harlan. I don't care what anybody says. I saw
2:58
Speaker 1: The Long Kiss good Night finally that that's been on
3:02
Speaker 1: your list for twelve years. World class movie starting at
3:06
Speaker 1: about this halfway mark. Okay, all right, So we're talking
3:11
Speaker 1: ice climbing today, and I guess I should probably start
3:15
Speaker 1: by asking just verifying, Um, no, I haven't have you
3:19
Speaker 1: ever seen I uh, I have seen ice, I've never
3:26
Speaker 1: ice climbed. And you know, another funny little thing is
3:29
Speaker 1: I don't know if you notice that my friend Debbie
3:31
Speaker 1: Ranka wrote this from the old House Notice Yep, that's
3:36
Speaker 1: quality stuff. She puts out the good stuff. Well she does.
3:39
Speaker 1: She did a great job researching. But it's just funny
3:41
Speaker 1: knowing Debbie. She is uh about as far away you
3:46
Speaker 1: can get from someone who might ice climb. But wasn't
3:49
Speaker 1: she into Roller Derby's sure? Okay, So I mean so
3:54
Speaker 1: there's a sense of adventure. Yeah, but I was surprised
3:57
Speaker 1: she did roller Derby. Uh, okay, I got you. So
4:02
Speaker 1: it's a surprise you to roller River. Yeah, there's no
4:04
Speaker 1: way she's gonna ice climb, even she doesn't like the
4:07
Speaker 1: cold weather, so nothing about it, even from what I
4:09
Speaker 1: can understand from ice climbing, I mean, we're far from experts.
4:12
Speaker 1: We just did some research on ice climbing for ice
4:15
Speaker 1: climb before. I haven't either. Um, and we'll probably get
4:17
Speaker 1: some stuff from but please be forgiving. We're trying our
4:20
Speaker 1: best here. But um, from what I can tell, even
4:24
Speaker 1: rock climbers don't typically ice climb. They are a very
4:28
Speaker 1: niche cadre. I think if you're an ice climber, you
4:31
Speaker 1: started I was a rock climber. But just because your
4:33
Speaker 1: rock climber does not automatically mean you can you can
4:36
Speaker 1: be an ice climber there. They seem similar at first,
4:39
Speaker 1: but when you really start to dig in, the nuance
4:42
Speaker 1: between the two is pretty significant when you're out there
4:45
Speaker 1: on the face of a glacier. Yeah, and I also
4:48
Speaker 1: think that, um, there are plenty of rock climbers who
4:53
Speaker 1: just want to go like shirt off or tank top
4:58
Speaker 1: and shorts and not. Yeah, because part of ice climbing
5:02
Speaker 1: is it's really cold. Yeah, it's a it's cold, it's
5:06
Speaker 1: equipment heavy. Yeah, there's a lot, there's just a there's
5:09
Speaker 1: a lot of differences. We'll go over some of the
5:11
Speaker 1: differences as they pop up, but just suffice to say
5:14
Speaker 1: that if you're familiar with rock climbing, that doesn't automatically
5:16
Speaker 1: mean you're gonna be familiar with ice climbing. No, And
5:19
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to sweat get in details
5:21
Speaker 1: wrong because there's probably like a six ice climbers Max
5:24
Speaker 1: who might listen to this show. Yeah, Oh, I think
5:27
Speaker 1: that's a generous number. Have you seen the Free Solo
5:30
Speaker 1: documentary yet? No? I haven't didn't it. It was either
5:33
Speaker 1: up for an oscar at one and I think it
5:35
Speaker 1: won a couple of years ago. Yeah, No, I haven't
5:37
Speaker 1: seen it, really, really, really good. I'm sure I would
5:41
Speaker 1: faint they just watching it. You know, it's pretty tense.
5:44
Speaker 1: Although I will say this, Chuck. On the other day,
5:46
Speaker 1: I was on a flight and um, everything just kept
5:51
Speaker 1: bottoming out. We ran into some terrible weather and I
5:54
Speaker 1: was just like filing my nails like it was nothing.
5:57
Speaker 1: That's why you have to like tend leading in front
6:01
Speaker 1: of me. They ache because I file them too too deeply.
6:06
Speaker 1: All right, ice climbing, Okay, so your story, Yeah, that
6:10
Speaker 1: was it. I just thought you'd appreciate that. Afraid of flying,
6:14
Speaker 1: I was, you know, talking about heights and all that. Sure,
6:17
Speaker 1: so there is talking about um, what was it called free,
6:20
Speaker 1: free solo? What's the name of the documentary? So that
6:22
Speaker 1: actually applies also kind of to ice climbing, as we'll
6:26
Speaker 1: see later. So there are some some similarities, but there's
6:29
Speaker 1: also some big differences. But ice climbing really more than
6:32
Speaker 1: anything evolved out of mountaineering, because when you're climbing an
6:37
Speaker 1: alpine mountain or a mountain that's really at a really
6:40
Speaker 1: high altitude, it's not all just like green grass and
6:44
Speaker 1: the von Trapp family and you know, birds singing in
6:47
Speaker 1: your ear. It gets really cold up there. There's a
6:50
Speaker 1: lot of snow, there's a lot of ice, and you
6:53
Speaker 1: are going to eventually face a point where either you
6:56
Speaker 1: have to turn back around and go back down and say, well,
6:58
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna summit this mountain, or you have to
7:00
Speaker 1: figure how to climb ice. And some of the earliest
7:04
Speaker 1: mountaineers had some real trouble with this. And it wasn't
7:06
Speaker 1: until a guy named Oscar um Ekenstein, right probably thank you,
7:14
Speaker 1: very very nice, Um invented something called crampons that really
7:19
Speaker 1: um change the game. I guess. Yeah. These are those
7:22
Speaker 1: super cool looking, uh toothed claws that you originally you
7:28
Speaker 1: would just strap them to your boots. They're like, you know,
7:31
Speaker 1: super sharp cleats basically that you could strap to your boots.
7:35
Speaker 1: You can still strap them to your boots, but you
7:37
Speaker 1: can also get boots. And of course that I'm gonna
7:40
Speaker 1: kind of pepper this with what I would do that
7:43
Speaker 1: was a nice climber. I would get the built ins um,
7:47
Speaker 1: but you can still go by the ones you strap
7:50
Speaker 1: on as well. I have to say, that's all I
7:52
Speaker 1: saw were the strap on ones. Really, I think they
7:55
Speaker 1: have them built in now. I looked, I couldn't find him.
7:58
Speaker 1: I saw some reference to him, but it looked more
8:00
Speaker 1: like like actual cleats where it's like a crampon. Okay,
8:04
Speaker 1: maybe that's it's different then. Also, I really hope I'm
8:06
Speaker 1: pronouncing that correctly. Is a crampon? I think so. So,
8:10
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a mountaineering couple and you need
8:13
Speaker 1: to be very sweet, if your wife asked you to
8:15
Speaker 1: go buy a box of crampons, right, you got to
8:18
Speaker 1: do that. So when you you know there, they are
8:21
Speaker 1: cleat like in in you know, design, But when you
8:25
Speaker 1: really get down to it, I mean, the teeth on
8:26
Speaker 1: those things are really long and really sharp, and they
8:30
Speaker 1: have to be because you have to dig into some
8:32
Speaker 1: serious stuff, some really hard ice with them. So from
8:36
Speaker 1: what I saw, the everything I came across was all
8:39
Speaker 1: like the strap on crampons. Strap strap on crampon. Right,
8:44
Speaker 1: I love it. So when Oscar Etkenstein, I'm sorry, Ekenstein
8:48
Speaker 1: invented the crampons. Um he was a mountaineer. He was
8:52
Speaker 1: an early proponent of what's called bouldering, which is basically
8:55
Speaker 1: climbing up over big rocks free solo wing. It's kind
8:58
Speaker 1: of even even lighter gear than rock climbing. And this
9:03
Speaker 1: guy was doing this at the turn of the last century.
9:05
Speaker 1: He was actually friends with Alistair Crowley too, it turns
9:08
Speaker 1: out who wasn't interesting cat though. So um Oscar oscar
9:14
Speaker 1: Etkenstein just changed everything with these crampons, because suddenly you
9:17
Speaker 1: could walk through um a walk on a glacier at
9:20
Speaker 1: a certain amount of a grade. And it just kind
9:24
Speaker 1: of was the first big step, and it was a
9:26
Speaker 1: very big step toward this um this sport extreme sport
9:29
Speaker 1: of ice climbing. Yeah, and I think, um, I don't
9:32
Speaker 1: think we mentioned did we that? Before this? You could
9:35
Speaker 1: still do that, but it would take a long long
9:36
Speaker 1: time because you would have to literally it's called step cutting.
9:39
Speaker 1: You would have to cut your steps into the ice
9:42
Speaker 1: um as you go, instead of just having these death boots.
9:48
Speaker 1: That's a better name for him. Could you imagine getting
9:50
Speaker 1: kicked with one of those, No, you would just bleed out.
9:52
Speaker 1: Surely that's been done in a movie, probably in Cliffhanger. Yeah,
9:56
Speaker 1: death by crampon. Surely there is no way that doesn't
9:59
Speaker 1: happen Cliffhanger. Maybe that's how John lythgo goes down. I
10:02
Speaker 1: don't I didn't see Cliffhanger. Is it ice or is
10:05
Speaker 1: it just Mountain. I think it's both because I remember
10:09
Speaker 1: on the movie poster it's like Stallone hanging by one
10:13
Speaker 1: hand from like a Rocky Craig, but he's wearing like
10:16
Speaker 1: a north Face jacket. So I'm thinking it's a little
10:20
Speaker 1: bit of both. Alright, mixed climbing, I think is what
10:22
Speaker 1: they call it. Well, you know Stallone, he likes to
10:25
Speaker 1: mix it up. He definitely does so. History wise, things advanced,
10:29
Speaker 1: as they do with all sports. And about five years later,
10:33
Speaker 1: twenty years later, there was a climber named Laurent Grivelle
10:38
Speaker 1: who these first crampons were just sort of on the
10:41
Speaker 1: bottom like cleats. He said, hey, you know what these
10:45
Speaker 1: things need. They need fangs coming out of the toe,
10:48
Speaker 1: out of the front, like those cowboy boots, to have
10:51
Speaker 1: like a switchblade. Totally. You know, I think Roadhouse had
10:56
Speaker 1: some of those who I'm not mistaken, probably because Cliffhang.
11:00
Speaker 1: There's one point where I think it's Sam Elliott and
11:05
Speaker 1: a bar fight says right boot, and there's just a
11:09
Speaker 1: knife in this guy's boot. Sam Ellie is so helpful, man,
11:14
Speaker 1: he really is, right boot. That was just a quote
11:18
Speaker 1: my old friend, uh, my dear departed friend, Billy used
11:21
Speaker 1: to say in college. Right, that's a good quote. So
11:24
Speaker 1: the fangs coming out of the front really change things
11:27
Speaker 1: because now they're like, hey, not only can we walk
11:31
Speaker 1: up fairly steep slopes, but we can get near vertical
11:35
Speaker 1: with this stuff, because we can just kick our toes
11:37
Speaker 1: right into this and just climb. And I don't know
11:41
Speaker 1: if you said it or not, but um uh was
11:44
Speaker 1: it Lauren Grivel? No, I'm sorry, I von Schwinard. No,
11:48
Speaker 1: we've just gotten to him in the nineteen sixties, the
11:50
Speaker 1: swinging sixties. So um, with that, with that cramp on,
11:54
Speaker 1: with the thing that comes out of the front. I've
11:56
Speaker 1: seen it called a point. I've seen it called fangs,
11:59
Speaker 1: but it can be like one point or two points,
12:02
Speaker 1: and they have kind of like their ups and downs.
12:04
Speaker 1: We'll talk about them a little bit later. But now
12:06
Speaker 1: finally you start to get to what most people think
12:09
Speaker 1: of ice climbing, because we should say, um, it took
12:13
Speaker 1: me a little while to understand just walking basically up
12:16
Speaker 1: a very gentle slope in in the mountains over ice
12:21
Speaker 1: is really difficult to do, and that that qualifies as
12:25
Speaker 1: ice climbing. That's like a certain grade of an ice climb.
12:29
Speaker 1: Um what most people think of, if they've ever heard
12:32
Speaker 1: of ice climbing, is somebody climbing up the sheer face
12:35
Speaker 1: of a glacier with those cool looking death right. And
12:40
Speaker 1: those are both two different types of what are called climbs.
12:42
Speaker 1: Climbing straight up as a climb, climbing at an angle
12:46
Speaker 1: a very shallow angle as a climb. Um just traversing ice,
12:51
Speaker 1: whether using crampons or pick as we'll talk about in
12:54
Speaker 1: a second, or both, those are those both qualifies ice climbs.
12:58
Speaker 1: And we've got to say that. But now that we've
13:00
Speaker 1: got the fangs in the front of the crampons, so
13:03
Speaker 1: that that that switchblade and right boot, Now you're starting
13:07
Speaker 1: to get into things like vertical climbs where you can
13:10
Speaker 1: climb up the face of a glacier. Now, yeah, and
13:13
Speaker 1: previous to Yvonne, how do you pronounce that? Nard? I
13:17
Speaker 1: think so he went on to become a billionaire because
13:21
Speaker 1: he founded Patagonia, by the way, and I want you
13:23
Speaker 1: to know this, he's a billionaire plus um. He is
13:27
Speaker 1: the guy that said, you know what, we've got these
13:30
Speaker 1: axes that we've been using, and I think we need
13:34
Speaker 1: to tweak them. I'm gonna chop off a few inches,
13:36
Speaker 1: go from about to about two inches. I assume it
13:41
Speaker 1: just made it a little more manageable, big part. Yeah,
13:44
Speaker 1: and then he changed that shape from this. It was
13:48
Speaker 1: previously straight at a really shallow angle at the shaft
13:51
Speaker 1: of the ax, you know the head. The head was
13:54
Speaker 1: kind of angled down right, yeah, But now I think
13:56
Speaker 1: he curved it right. Yeah. So it looks very sist like.
14:00
Speaker 1: It looked vicious before, but it was basically a straight
14:02
Speaker 1: line and angle downward. Now it's like angle downward and
14:06
Speaker 1: a straight line and then it curves back up. Yeah.
14:08
Speaker 1: I mean it's really it's cool looking. And it's got
14:10
Speaker 1: a little uh barb at the bottom, which I'm not
14:13
Speaker 1: entirely sure what that's for. I think for probably smacking
14:16
Speaker 1: ice around, basically chipping at it away. But so this this,
14:20
Speaker 1: the the changes to this mountaineering axe were radical enough
14:24
Speaker 1: that it's an entirely different tool now. Right Whereas before
14:29
Speaker 1: the mountaineering x was, um you kind of use it
14:32
Speaker 1: as a walking cane if it was long enough, because
14:33
Speaker 1: it was longer than the ice ice axes what are
14:36
Speaker 1: called ice tools. Um, but mostly it was if you
14:39
Speaker 1: started to slip backward down the ice, you you. You know,
14:43
Speaker 1: you picked the ice in front of you forward and
14:46
Speaker 1: held on like you you stopped yourself. It's called self arrest.
14:49
Speaker 1: You kept yourself from sliding down the mountain. Basically, that's
14:52
Speaker 1: what your mountaineering access for. What you're um your ice tool,
14:56
Speaker 1: your ice axes for is to actually just like the
15:00
Speaker 1: front of the crampons, right, the little the fangs that
15:03
Speaker 1: come out these ice tools. Your is an act. You
15:05
Speaker 1: swing above yourself and you basically pull yourself up with
15:09
Speaker 1: until you get another footing with the front of your crampons,
15:12
Speaker 1: and then you use your leg and then use your arm,
15:14
Speaker 1: and then use your leg, and then little by little
15:16
Speaker 1: you move up the vertical face of a glacier or
15:20
Speaker 1: more spectacularly, something like a frozen waterfall. Yeah, it looks
15:24
Speaker 1: um beautiful and striking, and it looks like an awful
15:27
Speaker 1: thing to do. It looks really hard, and I think
15:31
Speaker 1: it's I've read everywhere I've read it, it's it's said
15:33
Speaker 1: that it's even harder than it looks. Yeah, and I
15:36
Speaker 1: love him. Here Teddy said something like anyone can learn
15:39
Speaker 1: to do this if you you know, I mean, technically
15:42
Speaker 1: she's you know, sort of right, But yeah, I think
15:45
Speaker 1: like it's more like one percent of you could probably
15:48
Speaker 1: do this right or want to do this. So now
15:51
Speaker 1: all this, all the stuff is in place for ice
15:54
Speaker 1: climbing to become an extreme sport. And this is by
15:56
Speaker 1: the sixties, and I really started to pick up I
15:59
Speaker 1: think in the seven these and eighties, and definitely by
16:01
Speaker 1: the nineties it was an established thing. Um. So let's
16:06
Speaker 1: let's take a little break, shall we, and then'll come
16:08
Speaker 1: back and kind of drill in a little more to
16:10
Speaker 1: the equipment that you're gonna need if you're going to
16:12
Speaker 1: start climbing. Get glaciers. Great, So with this, Oh, welcome
16:43
Speaker 1: back everyone, we're here, right, cheez chuck, get right to
16:47
Speaker 1: the point already. Right, So we were talking about the
16:50
Speaker 1: tools in these uh these axes, which you I think
16:55
Speaker 1: they call them sticks sometimes. Oh oh, I had no
16:59
Speaker 1: uncovered that, and go maybe might I might be wrong.
17:02
Speaker 1: They're probably one of the coolest looking things you could
17:05
Speaker 1: buy at an outfit or yes, have you seen them?
17:09
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I'm a big fan of the petzel Ergo,
17:12
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, they're really cool. Petzel makes good stuff. Yeah,
17:18
Speaker 1: I got a lot of information from some of Petzel's blogs.
17:21
Speaker 1: I have to say, yeah, so there are a couple
17:24
Speaker 1: of ways you can go with this. I mean, there
17:25
Speaker 1: are all kinds you can get. They're all sort of
17:27
Speaker 1: variations of the same thing. But um, and when I
17:30
Speaker 1: was reading Debbie saying, it was funny because there you
17:33
Speaker 1: can get one leashed or not leashed. And my first
17:36
Speaker 1: instinct was, why would you ever not want to leash
17:38
Speaker 1: on that thing? Because you drop it and it's gone.
17:42
Speaker 1: It's a big deal if you drop your your um
17:44
Speaker 1: ice tool. Yeah, it's not good. But she makes a
17:47
Speaker 1: very good point. You know, these it's not just like, oh,
17:51
Speaker 1: just take the leash off of your wrists, Like you've
17:53
Speaker 1: got on heavy gear and heavy gloves and it's not
17:57
Speaker 1: easy just to slip that thing off your wrist. So
17:59
Speaker 1: if you want to use you might have two or
18:01
Speaker 1: three of these for different uh you know, for different
18:05
Speaker 1: terrains or whatever, different kinds of ice, and switching them
18:08
Speaker 1: out as a pain. So what I gathered was, if
18:11
Speaker 1: you're a really experienced ice climber, you probably don't want
18:15
Speaker 1: to leash. No. No, And that's actually becoming um much
18:20
Speaker 1: more prevalent called uh it unleashed, leashleashed is unleashed, right,
18:28
Speaker 1: So that's be that's becoming much more prevalent. And one
18:31
Speaker 1: of the reasons it is becoming prevalent because some of
18:33
Speaker 1: the UM, some of the fine makers of ice tools,
18:36
Speaker 1: like Petzel, who is not a sponsor of the podcast,
18:40
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm just a fan UM, they have
18:43
Speaker 1: started to create ice tools that have like real grips
18:48
Speaker 1: on them, that have like ridges for where your fingers fit.
18:52
Speaker 1: They're curved in and upward, and there's like something that
18:55
Speaker 1: goes underneath the heel of your hands. The upshot of
18:58
Speaker 1: all this is it's getting tough, are and tougher to
19:01
Speaker 1: drop your your ice tool, even if it is unleashed.
19:06
Speaker 1: But there's still plenty of people who use leashes, and
19:08
Speaker 1: it's and when we say leash, it's it's very much
19:10
Speaker 1: like UM a surfboard leash, whereas like a thing of
19:13
Speaker 1: velcro that goes around your wrist and there's like, you know,
19:15
Speaker 1: some unbreakable nylon rope that UM connects to a carabineer
19:21
Speaker 1: that connects to your your ice tool. So UM I
19:24
Speaker 1: would go with with leashed. I think if you're gonna start,
19:27
Speaker 1: you probably are going to have it leashed for a
19:29
Speaker 1: while until you get used to it, which which petzel
19:32
Speaker 1: did you like the ergo? Okay, Yeah, it's beautiful and
19:36
Speaker 1: it looks like it looks like they're at least three
19:39
Speaker 1: different ways you can kill someone with this. Yeah. See
19:42
Speaker 1: so so do you see right here where it's like
19:44
Speaker 1: curved and like at the bottom this grip right here
19:46
Speaker 1: totally it looks like a little pistol grip. It is,
19:48
Speaker 1: and it's a really well made It's a work of arch. Chuck,
19:52
Speaker 1: let's just call it that. I have a feeling you
19:54
Speaker 1: might just get one of these, just a half, that
19:56
Speaker 1: would be great. Keep it under the bed. Yeah, frame now,
20:00
Speaker 1: I'd frame it in a shadow box and just make
20:04
Speaker 1: up stories about all the all the glaciers. That's the one.
20:07
Speaker 1: Just dig it up a little bit, you know, right right,
20:10
Speaker 1: because like Josh, that looks brand new. It's got the
20:13
Speaker 1: price tag on it. Still. So you were talking about
20:16
Speaker 1: we're talking about the crampons earlier, and you mentioned briefly
20:20
Speaker 1: the you know, some of them have a mono points,
20:22
Speaker 1: just the one fang summer duel point, and I, as
20:28
Speaker 1: a newbie, was like, man, I want fangs everywhere I
20:31
Speaker 1: can get them, But that's not necessarily beneficial, is it
20:35
Speaker 1: no and um you Well, if you have one fang,
20:40
Speaker 1: you can really dig in deeper because you're putting all
20:42
Speaker 1: of that force from the kick um onto the glacier
20:46
Speaker 1: into that one point, hence the name mono point. So
20:49
Speaker 1: you can really get in there and get a lot
20:50
Speaker 1: of a lot of stability um or a lot of
20:53
Speaker 1: um what's the word I'm looking for, chuck, A lot
20:57
Speaker 1: of purchase. Okay, but it's not as stable as the
21:02
Speaker 1: two fanged ones, the two pronged ones, because those have
21:06
Speaker 1: that pressure spread out a little bit, so you have
21:08
Speaker 1: a little more side to side stability, so you're kind
21:10
Speaker 1: of trading one for the other. I think both work
21:13
Speaker 1: is probably a matter of taste. I think it's probably
21:16
Speaker 1: also a matter of terrain. I think the model point
21:19
Speaker 1: works better in rocky terrain and they're able. Yeah yeah,
21:24
Speaker 1: and you can get heal spurs um, not the dreaded
21:28
Speaker 1: foot problem, but spurs coming off the rear. And again,
21:34
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a multi give me all the things
21:37
Speaker 1: that you can get on my boot. Sure, I'm with you,
21:41
Speaker 1: you know, just yeah, like like concertina wire wrapped around
21:46
Speaker 1: your feet basically. Sure. So, um, you've got the next
21:52
Speaker 1: big thing you need, and this is really basic stuff.
21:55
Speaker 1: If you go online and really start to dig in,
21:57
Speaker 1: out door research had some pretty good like a Beginner's
22:00
Speaker 1: Guide to ice climbing. Um, there's a guy named Will
22:04
Speaker 1: Gad who's just like maybe the premier ice climber in
22:08
Speaker 1: the world, or has been for a while now. Um
22:12
Speaker 1: he he writes a pretty technical blog. So there's a
22:14
Speaker 1: lot of information you can get out there. But if
22:16
Speaker 1: you ever look at a list of like the basic
22:19
Speaker 1: necessities you need, it is really really extensive. I mean,
22:24
Speaker 1: your ice tool and your crampons are just one of many,
22:29
Speaker 1: many things that you need to have on just a
22:30
Speaker 1: basic ice climb. But another thing that you have to
22:33
Speaker 1: have are what it's called ice screws. And if you
22:36
Speaker 1: have ever um done any rock climbing, Um, when you're
22:40
Speaker 1: climbing up a rock, especially if it's a well traveled rock, um,
22:45
Speaker 1: there's gonna be bolts in place in the rock and
22:48
Speaker 1: you you know, clip onto those things and suspend yourself. Well,
22:52
Speaker 1: when you're climbing up ice, that ice that you're climbing
22:55
Speaker 1: might not have been there last year, or it's not
22:57
Speaker 1: gonna be there three years from now, so and you're climbing.
23:00
Speaker 1: You have to put in your own bolts and what
23:02
Speaker 1: they've developed or what are called ice screws that are
23:05
Speaker 1: exactly what they sound like. They're they're long screws that
23:09
Speaker 1: you bore into the ice and then you clip your
23:12
Speaker 1: carabine or two and um ballet from or at least
23:16
Speaker 1: hang from. This is where it gets terrifying to me,
23:19
Speaker 1: because it's ice. You know, apparently ice can be just
23:25
Speaker 1: as strong as rock. But you know, I've had some
23:31
Speaker 1: ice in my mouth before. Sure I can chew that
23:34
Speaker 1: with my teeth, It's true. So it's a little bit
23:39
Speaker 1: unnerving to me to think about screwing into ice and
23:44
Speaker 1: supporting my body weight, which, of course I wouldn't be
23:49
Speaker 1: up there like this. That'd be a death sentence. Right. Well, apparently,
23:55
Speaker 1: if you ever want to get as physically fit as
23:57
Speaker 1: you ever will be in your life, just start ice climbing. Well,
24:00
Speaker 1: we would do it before you start ice climbing. Problem. Well, yeah,
24:03
Speaker 1: you have to train for it. But I'm saying like,
24:04
Speaker 1: if you're a nice climber, you're about in the peak
24:08
Speaker 1: physical fitness that any human being is. Yes, I would
24:10
Speaker 1: agree with that. Um, so you got your ice screws,
24:13
Speaker 1: you've got your crampons, you've got your axe, you've got
24:16
Speaker 1: all kinds of little spawn divots and do hickeys, you've
24:20
Speaker 1: got your super cold weather gear, and you've got to
24:23
Speaker 1: have that helmet because ice does chip away and fall
24:27
Speaker 1: and you don't want to get clunked on the bean
24:29
Speaker 1: when you're hanging off of a sheet of ice. Right,
24:31
Speaker 1: And that's like another big difference between ice climbing and
24:34
Speaker 1: rock climbing, or the overhead hazards are way more prevalent
24:38
Speaker 1: with ice climbing them with rock climbing. I mean you
24:41
Speaker 1: can still you know, a rock slide can happen, Little
24:44
Speaker 1: rocks can fall off if um, you know, you go
24:47
Speaker 1: for a ledge or something when you're rock climbing, like
24:49
Speaker 1: debris can fall down, and it is a problem. But
24:52
Speaker 1: with ice climbing, it's just a matter of fact of
24:55
Speaker 1: the climb. There's going to be ice flying everywhere. Sometimes
24:58
Speaker 1: way more ice comes off then you intended to um,
25:02
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a little bit, but there's
25:04
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of ice falling, so you
25:06
Speaker 1: have to have a helmet when you're ice climbing, that's right.
25:10
Speaker 1: You're gonna be doing this. You can do it kind
25:13
Speaker 1: of anywhere in the world where there is ice on
25:15
Speaker 1: a mountain. Plenty of places in North America. You can
25:19
Speaker 1: go to Norway, you can go to Iceland, you can
25:21
Speaker 1: go to the Alps in Europe. Grease kind of surprised me,
25:25
Speaker 1: but I was just being kind of naive and dumb
25:30
Speaker 1: with my geography. Of course, Greece has big mountains with
25:34
Speaker 1: ice and snow. I just for some reason I was
25:37
Speaker 1: thinking their mountains in Greece. Yeah, you think of like
25:40
Speaker 1: olives and wine and stuff, you know, and then Mount
25:43
Speaker 1: Olympus of course. Oh yeah, there's that. It's kind of
25:45
Speaker 1: a famous one, right. I also saw Scotland actually has
25:49
Speaker 1: some really um intense ice climb interesting. Yeah, and there's
25:54
Speaker 1: plenty of places in the United States. There's actually an
25:56
Speaker 1: ice climbing park called the ray Um that is has
26:01
Speaker 1: an ice climbing competition every year where like the best
26:04
Speaker 1: of the best, and actually, from what I understand, everybody
26:06
Speaker 1: comes in and competes. Is it fake ice? I mean
26:09
Speaker 1: not fake, but it's it's built. It's built, but it's
26:14
Speaker 1: not like it's built on rocks. Like I think they
26:16
Speaker 1: found a a spot in the world where they could
26:21
Speaker 1: kind of grow ice. I'm not exactly sure how they
26:24
Speaker 1: do it. I just saw that it's like human enabled basically,
26:27
Speaker 1: Oh you need it's a garden house, right and cold temperatures.
26:31
Speaker 1: There's some dude in bermuda shorts and a panama hat
26:35
Speaker 1: and like dark socks up to his knees. Just with
26:37
Speaker 1: this hose. Just go squirt that down for the next
26:39
Speaker 1: three days, right stand there, Walter. Uh, there's different kinds
26:44
Speaker 1: of ice though, and uh, when you're an experienced ice climber,
26:49
Speaker 1: you can you can look at a face and kind
26:51
Speaker 1: of know what you're getting into before you even come
26:53
Speaker 1: close to it, depending on how it's laying there and
26:57
Speaker 1: what color it is, how clear it is. Um. I
27:03
Speaker 1: tried to get a read on what would be the
27:05
Speaker 1: ideal ice, and I really couldn't quite suss that out.
27:09
Speaker 1: This is what I saw, so, um, you want ice
27:13
Speaker 1: that has has been around for a while, So probably
27:16
Speaker 1: alpine ice, which started out as fallen snow. Snow that's falling,
27:20
Speaker 1: because that creates different kind of ice. But there's a
27:23
Speaker 1: big heavy snowfall that dumped on a mountain and then
27:26
Speaker 1: the temperature is cooled and all of that snow started
27:28
Speaker 1: to turn to ice, and as it did, um the
27:32
Speaker 1: air got squeezed out of it by the heaviness of
27:35
Speaker 1: the snow to begin with, but as the ice formed,
27:37
Speaker 1: it should have as well, and then it bonds to
27:40
Speaker 1: the actual mountain side, so it's real solid to begin with,
27:45
Speaker 1: and then temperatures get around freezing maybe a little above
27:50
Speaker 1: for about five consecutive days, and on that fifth or
27:54
Speaker 1: sixth day of that kind of temperature, um the ice
27:57
Speaker 1: should be just perfect for ice climbing because it takes
28:00
Speaker 1: on the state of what's called plastic where your ice
28:05
Speaker 1: pick just goes right in and it stays in and
28:08
Speaker 1: it's you can just tell it's very satisfying. It there's
28:11
Speaker 1: a lot of strength to it. But at the same time,
28:14
Speaker 1: it's not like chipping into a rock because, like we said,
28:17
Speaker 1: like one of the reasons you have to be so fit,
28:20
Speaker 1: and you are so fit just by virtue of being
28:23
Speaker 1: an ice climber as you expend a tremendous amount of
28:26
Speaker 1: energy with each swing of your ice tool. Because if
28:32
Speaker 1: you're working with just plastic ice, that's going to be
28:35
Speaker 1: a pretty easy, satisfying climb. But that's a that's ideal,
28:39
Speaker 1: that's not the norm most of the time. When you
28:41
Speaker 1: swing that that pick and again you're on the side
28:44
Speaker 1: of a glacier, say you're hanging on by your feet,
28:47
Speaker 1: the fangs on the front of your feet, um, and
28:50
Speaker 1: you are swinging above your head an axe that you're
28:55
Speaker 1: hoping to get on the first try, just a really
28:58
Speaker 1: good solid stick, but that very unlikely. Instead, you might
29:02
Speaker 1: do three, four or five times to get a good
29:05
Speaker 1: stick in there, and each one of those is expending
29:08
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. And you're doing this for meters
29:11
Speaker 1: and meters depending on how high this this ice climb
29:16
Speaker 1: is um and it's it requires a tremendous amount of
29:20
Speaker 1: energy and a lot of it is redundant um redundant effort,
29:24
Speaker 1: having to swing that pick multiple times just to get
29:27
Speaker 1: that one stick. Yeah, because my again my naivete thought, Man,
29:32
Speaker 1: I want to go when it's thirty below zero because
29:36
Speaker 1: I want that ice to be so frozen. I think so,
29:40
Speaker 1: you'd think so. But the colder it gets, if it's
29:44
Speaker 1: like really really below freezing, the ice might get brittle. Uh,
29:48
Speaker 1: it might break off. And that's called dinner plating, I assume,
29:53
Speaker 1: because ice pieces about the size of a dinner plate
29:57
Speaker 1: will come falling off into your face. Yeah, you not
30:00
Speaker 1: want that, man. No, So, like you said, you want
30:03
Speaker 1: temperatures right at about freezing. Um, even a little bit
30:08
Speaker 1: above freezing is is ideal. Yeah, but yeah, I mean
30:13
Speaker 1: just right around there, not not too much above, because
30:16
Speaker 1: then the ice turns into slush, and slush doesn't hold
30:18
Speaker 1: you very well. So it's almost like the very first
30:22
Speaker 1: step towards this long path towards slush is where the
30:26
Speaker 1: ideal ice is. And I saw actually one reason why,
30:30
Speaker 1: maybe even the only reason why, that dinner plating happens
30:33
Speaker 1: when it's really cold, when ice becomes less stable when
30:36
Speaker 1: it's really really cold, because I thought the same thing,
30:38
Speaker 1: but um, it's because the colder it gets, the more
30:42
Speaker 1: the ice shrinks. Well, if the ice is attached like
30:46
Speaker 1: to the top of a cliff and the bottom of
30:48
Speaker 1: a cliff, it can't physically shrink very well, right, it
30:52
Speaker 1: doesn't have that shrink so instead it thins out. It
30:55
Speaker 1: gets tense, So there's a tension in the ice and
30:58
Speaker 1: when you hit it with your pick, it just shatters.
31:01
Speaker 1: That's why you don't want it to be just ridiculously
31:04
Speaker 1: cold out and have been for a while, because that
31:06
Speaker 1: ice is far more tense because it's constricting under the cold.
31:10
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. And that alpine ice we were talking about,
31:13
Speaker 1: is that really pretty blue ice that you see. Uh.
31:16
Speaker 1: If ice is really really solid and climbable, it'll be
31:20
Speaker 1: blue or blue green. Sometimes it might have a little
31:23
Speaker 1: yellow to it because of the minerality to it. Uh. Really,
31:27
Speaker 1: really white ice isn't great. Well, I mean it's not bad.
31:31
Speaker 1: It's it's got air in it and it makes a
31:33
Speaker 1: little bit easier to climb, but it gets a little
31:35
Speaker 1: dicey with the screws. Yeah. And the reason why is
31:38
Speaker 1: because that air that um can form when say, like
31:41
Speaker 1: a waterfall freezes, and it's essentially a flash freeze. It
31:45
Speaker 1: doesn't happen for a very long period of time. Yeah,
31:47
Speaker 1: people climb those, dude. I've seen pictures climbing of Rosen waterfall.
31:52
Speaker 1: It's yes, it's nuts. But the reason why, and you
31:55
Speaker 1: can see it's it is very it's very opaque. Um,
31:58
Speaker 1: it's very white. And the reason why it's because there's
32:01
Speaker 1: a lot of air trapped in there. Same thing with
32:03
Speaker 1: um when it's falling snow that's turning to ice, not
32:06
Speaker 1: snow that was already fell and then turned to ice,
32:08
Speaker 1: but it's turning to ice as it's falling. That traps
32:11
Speaker 1: a lot of air in there too. And yeah, you
32:13
Speaker 1: can get a pretty good you know, pick stick in there,
32:16
Speaker 1: but it's not going to support you because it's inherently
32:20
Speaker 1: less dense. It's less solid because there's so much air
32:23
Speaker 1: trapped inside. That's right. Uh. And I don't think we
32:26
Speaker 1: mentioned the chandelier ice. It's very pretty. Um, these are
32:30
Speaker 1: icicles that have fused together, but it's not great for climbing.
32:34
Speaker 1: It's doesn't hold the screws very well. Uh. And if
32:37
Speaker 1: you're if you're an ice climber, you know your way
32:39
Speaker 1: around all this stuff. You know where to head toward
32:43
Speaker 1: your down there at the bottom looking at your route anyway, Um,
32:47
Speaker 1: you know which way do I want to go to
32:49
Speaker 1: get the best ice. But you can navigate most of
32:51
Speaker 1: this stuff pretty well, and you know to stay away
32:53
Speaker 1: from I mean, people still die doing it. Of course,
32:57
Speaker 1: mistakes and accidents happen, but you know what you're getting into,
33:01
Speaker 1: and you know what kind of ice. You're not gonna
33:03
Speaker 1: just try and stab into a chandelier. No, but I
33:06
Speaker 1: did see. Um, it's called reading the ice where you're
33:09
Speaker 1: just standing there basically visually mentally, um, doing your climb,
33:14
Speaker 1: going through it in your head. And there's plenty of
33:16
Speaker 1: like you know, perennial ice sheets that aren't going anywhere
33:20
Speaker 1: for you know, well for and for the next couple
33:24
Speaker 1: of decades at least, but um, they've been there for
33:26
Speaker 1: a really long time and people climb them. And then
33:28
Speaker 1: once you climb them and you get a good pick
33:30
Speaker 1: stick in there, when you pull your pick back out,
33:33
Speaker 1: that stick is still there. So the people who follow
33:36
Speaker 1: after you use the same things. Right, It's like a
33:41
Speaker 1: allege or something in rock climbing. It stays there well,
33:45
Speaker 1: so um that makes the climbing a lot a lot
33:47
Speaker 1: more easy. Hum. Um. One of the coolest things about
33:50
Speaker 1: free solo was and this was something I didn't know.
33:53
Speaker 1: I kind of thought, like, you go to climb a
33:56
Speaker 1: rock and you kind of just do your thing and
33:58
Speaker 1: what route you think is best. But established places like
34:01
Speaker 1: El Capitan, which is you know what this one focused on,
34:05
Speaker 1: there are only certain ways you can even climb it,
34:07
Speaker 1: and they're very well established routes. They're named and um,
34:12
Speaker 1: you should see this, dude, You're gonna you're gonna love it. Okay,
34:15
Speaker 1: I'll see you it's really I will, I will watch
34:18
Speaker 1: it simultaneously. When you watch Uh, it's a wonderful life. Okay, Um,
34:23
Speaker 1: but I would suggest if you don't know anything about
34:25
Speaker 1: the story, you're not like googling into it, just watch
34:28
Speaker 1: it because there are some there's some stress as to
34:33
Speaker 1: what you think might happen if you don't know the
34:37
Speaker 1: real stories, the real story I will, I liked. I'm like,
34:41
Speaker 1: I'd like to go in fresh Okay, so um, but
34:45
Speaker 1: what you're saying is is like there is a set way,
34:48
Speaker 1: maybe a handful of different ways you can climb El Capitan.
34:51
Speaker 1: Same thing with these climbs, but depending on whether this
34:55
Speaker 1: is new ice that's not going to be there at
34:57
Speaker 1: the end of the season because it's like a frozen waterfall.
34:59
Speaker 1: It's gonna unfreeze and freezes differently every single time, every
35:02
Speaker 1: single year year. Um, you may be the first person
35:05
Speaker 1: to make this climb, and so you have to get
35:07
Speaker 1: super inventive or it could be you know, one that's
35:10
Speaker 1: been climbed by a bunch of people, and um, it's
35:13
Speaker 1: a lot easier because you don't have to exert quite
35:15
Speaker 1: as much energy. I saw, I saw, Um, you know,
35:18
Speaker 1: one climb of the same grade. We'll talk about grades
35:22
Speaker 1: in a second. Can be you know, can take an
35:25
Speaker 1: hour or can I should say, not me, but can
35:27
Speaker 1: take that? Will gad guy an hour? But one that's
35:30
Speaker 1: been picked through already, Um, it will take him like
35:34
Speaker 1: ten minutes. What fun is that I would forge my
35:37
Speaker 1: own path? Yeah, I guess, and you can you could maybe,
35:42
Speaker 1: I don't know. Actually you should probably just follow the
35:45
Speaker 1: existing path. All right. Should we take another break? Yes?
35:48
Speaker 1: We should. All right, let's do that and then we'll
35:50
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about technique right after this. Alright,
36:19
Speaker 1: So remember ice climbing also includes going up very gentle
36:22
Speaker 1: slopes on glaciers at the top of the mountain. Like
36:25
Speaker 1: basically when you're watching somebody, you're like, oh, they're just walking,
36:29
Speaker 1: but it's there's ice that they're walking on, so it's
36:32
Speaker 1: really hard to walk on. So there's actual techniques that
36:35
Speaker 1: are involved in that level of ice climbing. Um. And
36:38
Speaker 1: the first one is just flat footing, which is well,
36:40
Speaker 1: you would just basically call it walking, but you're walking
36:43
Speaker 1: with your feet kind of turned out like a duck
36:46
Speaker 1: going along the ice with again with your mountaineering axe. UM,
36:51
Speaker 1: to keep yourself from sliding down the mountain if you
36:53
Speaker 1: start to slip. Yeah, and you may the French technique
36:57
Speaker 1: is what it's also called. You may not eat and
37:00
Speaker 1: be used in your acts at this point. But like
37:02
Speaker 1: you said, it's just sort of like a duck walk.
37:04
Speaker 1: If you look up, you're walking with your um. There's
37:07
Speaker 1: a lot of stress on the inside part of your feet, right,
37:10
Speaker 1: which is tough. And if you do this a lot, um,
37:14
Speaker 1: it's tough on your ankles. You might want to switch
37:16
Speaker 1: to something called side stepping. Um. That's exactly what it
37:20
Speaker 1: sounds like. But you know there's an inherent risk there
37:24
Speaker 1: because you're you're bringing those boots with those crampons which
37:28
Speaker 1: are highly snagg able over each other, and it would
37:32
Speaker 1: be very easy and tricky to snag one ft and
37:36
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that. No, And not only that,
37:39
Speaker 1: if you are smart, you're probably using a rope line
37:43
Speaker 1: um that you're connected to, uh to keep you from
37:46
Speaker 1: actually falling off of the mountain, So you're having to
37:49
Speaker 1: step over that as well, or to step with that
37:51
Speaker 1: connected to the front of your body. Um. Yeah, so
37:54
Speaker 1: it's it's got to be extremely difficult to do. But again,
37:58
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier than cutting like a foothold like
38:01
Speaker 1: they used to do in the old timing days, like
38:03
Speaker 1: oct oscar Exstein. I wonder people free solo ice They do, yes,
38:10
Speaker 1: so yes, if you just have crampons and the pick axes.
38:17
Speaker 1: Some people like climbing a waterfall. There might not be
38:20
Speaker 1: anywhere to put screws in um and you just you
38:24
Speaker 1: just use that. You use the axes above you and
38:26
Speaker 1: the crampons uh in in front of you, and you
38:30
Speaker 1: just climb up a waterfall. That's a form of ice climbing.
38:34
Speaker 1: I think it's very rare. I think most people are
38:36
Speaker 1: much more safety conscious and stop. Put in an ice screw,
38:40
Speaker 1: you know, clip into that and then you know, move
38:43
Speaker 1: up and we'll talk a little more about that in
38:44
Speaker 1: a second. But I think that's the norm. But people
38:48
Speaker 1: do free solo ice climb with just their tools and
38:51
Speaker 1: their crampons. Yeah, and just like free solong on on
38:54
Speaker 1: a rock. That's the that's the subset even of experience
38:59
Speaker 1: rock climbers, right, because it's you know, one as they say,
39:03
Speaker 1: one fall does it all? It's kookie, man, Yeah, it's
39:07
Speaker 1: a nerve wracking one fault does it at all? That's good? Thanks? Uh,
39:12
Speaker 1: then we need to talk about the German technique. This
39:14
Speaker 1: is what I would do. Uh. And this is where
39:17
Speaker 1: those front fangs come into play, because the Germans got
39:22
Speaker 1: in there and they were like, I don't want to
39:24
Speaker 1: walk like a duck, I don't want to sidestep, I
39:26
Speaker 1: don't want to look goofy. Why don't you just kick
39:29
Speaker 1: into that thing and climbate like a ladder? Yeah, And
39:32
Speaker 1: I think it's depending on what type of um, what
39:36
Speaker 1: what type of technique you're using. It very much depends
39:39
Speaker 1: on the degree or the angle of the terrain. Yeah,
39:43
Speaker 1: Like you can't front point if that you know, there's
39:46
Speaker 1: not enough of an angle in front of you. So
39:48
Speaker 1: by the time your front pointing that things that like
39:50
Speaker 1: a fifties sixty degree angle by now and then onward
39:55
Speaker 1: to nine degree plus. Yeah. And I also saw a
39:58
Speaker 1: lot of pictures of p people using too, That's all
40:03
Speaker 1: I saw. But that's not always the way though. No.
40:08
Speaker 1: And in fact, Debbie basically describes like as the basic
40:12
Speaker 1: technique that you're just using one ax so that you're
40:16
Speaker 1: forming a triangle with your body with your feet at
40:20
Speaker 1: about shoulder with the part beneath you, and then your
40:23
Speaker 1: acts like in the center above you forming a triangle.
40:27
Speaker 1: Um which I didn't see anybody. She is right, she
40:31
Speaker 1: knows a lot more than we do about that. But um, yeah,
40:34
Speaker 1: I didn't see anyone using that. Everyone was using technique
40:37
Speaker 1: that she called um uh traction, which is basically what
40:41
Speaker 1: I described. You've got two axes, one just above each shoulder,
40:45
Speaker 1: and your feet are shoulder at the part, and you're
40:47
Speaker 1: just climbing up one bit at a time like a
40:51
Speaker 1: like a human fly. Yeah, I would want to I
40:54
Speaker 1: want three. I would grow another arm and I would
40:59
Speaker 1: have three axes in that right, I would just stay
41:03
Speaker 1: at the lodge. Oh man, A little hot cocoa, maybe
41:08
Speaker 1: some whiskey. Whiskey and hot cocoa. I don't know how
41:12
Speaker 1: that would be nice? Fire? Yes, what else? I think
41:17
Speaker 1: that's it? And maybe um yeah, no, that's it. That's
41:21
Speaker 1: all you need? Flannel body suit? Uh yeah, I was
41:24
Speaker 1: gonna say, really nice like sweater. Sure yeah, maybe some meatballs?
41:33
Speaker 1: Sure this sounds great. Oh fonn do? How about that?
41:37
Speaker 1: There you go, Chuck, I can always go for some
41:39
Speaker 1: fonn do. I haven't done had that in a while. Um,
41:42
Speaker 1: have you ever had roclette? I don't think so what
41:46
Speaker 1: is so Umi's aunt and uncle got us into it.
41:49
Speaker 1: It's like the seventies thing in the vein of fawn do.
41:53
Speaker 1: But it's like this this cook top, but and you
41:55
Speaker 1: end up in bed with another woman. It's this cook
41:59
Speaker 1: took up that you cook like vegetables or you know, um,
42:03
Speaker 1: whatever you want. I mean, typically it's like mushrooms or
42:06
Speaker 1: onions or something like that. And then just underneath there's
42:09
Speaker 1: another heating element and you put hunks of cheese typically
42:13
Speaker 1: green air or um, I think gree air usually uh,
42:17
Speaker 1: and then you melt it and then you put it
42:19
Speaker 1: all together on your plate. So it's just melted, gooey,
42:22
Speaker 1: awesome cheese over like you know, freshly um saute vegetables.
42:29
Speaker 1: It's really really good, and it's also fun because you're
42:32
Speaker 1: just sitting there cooking, talking and everything. It's just like
42:35
Speaker 1: a good little social what's it called seventies dinner? Recolette
42:39
Speaker 1: And originally reclett was a big wheel of cheese pushed
42:43
Speaker 1: close to a fire so that it was kind of melty,
42:45
Speaker 1: and you just walk up with hunks of bread and
42:47
Speaker 1: like you know, scoop out hunks of gooey cheese with it. Um.
42:51
Speaker 1: This is like kind of a like the Milton Bradley
42:54
Speaker 1: version of Raclette that I'm talking about. But is the
42:57
Speaker 1: reclette the actual cheese or this you? I think it
43:00
Speaker 1: was originally the cheese, but now it's both the cheese
43:03
Speaker 1: and the unit. Okay, look at there, you'll see what
43:06
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Yeah, I can quite picture it, right, So, yeah,
43:10
Speaker 1: it is kind of tough to describe in my own defense,
43:12
Speaker 1: but it's it's really cool. It's so is the idea
43:15
Speaker 1: that the juices dropped down into the cheese or is it?
43:20
Speaker 1: Why is it even together? Then? Just efficiency? You got
43:24
Speaker 1: one one unit? All right. I guarantee whoever invented that
43:30
Speaker 1: never envisioned two dudes in talking about it calling it
43:34
Speaker 1: a unit. You know. Yeah, no way, man, that looks good.
43:40
Speaker 1: It is. It is good. We'll have to have a
43:42
Speaker 1: Reclette party sometime. Fantastic. You're gonna love it too. Uh So,
43:47
Speaker 1: where were we here? We're talking about reclette, right, but
43:50
Speaker 1: were we climbing high up an ice waterfall? Uh? We?
43:55
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about the techniques, and we both
43:57
Speaker 1: agreed that we would want at least two acts. As
43:59
Speaker 1: you said, you would grow a third arm for a
44:01
Speaker 1: third ax, but you're using both feet and both arms
44:05
Speaker 1: in what's called the um the traction technique attraction technique.
44:11
Speaker 1: You're looking to not dinner plate, so you're looking for
44:13
Speaker 1: the strongest ice. If it's convex, that's probably not a
44:17
Speaker 1: good place to to throw that ax into. It'll probably
44:19
Speaker 1: shatter and dinner plate, although occasionally you might dinner plate
44:25
Speaker 1: and find a very much stronger piece of ice underneath
44:28
Speaker 1: that ice. Yeah, and so um Debbie suggests if you are,
44:34
Speaker 1: you know the best way to prevent dinner plating is
44:36
Speaker 1: to just kind of not use your full force if
44:39
Speaker 1: you can swinging that pick and uh, maybe kind of
44:43
Speaker 1: testing to see what kind of resistance you get. Also,
44:45
Speaker 1: you want to listen out for sounds to hollow sounds
44:49
Speaker 1: or not good vibrations in the ice when you swing
44:52
Speaker 1: your your tool into it not good either. You don't
44:56
Speaker 1: want to trust that ice, So you're listening out, you're
44:59
Speaker 1: feeling out, um, and if it looks like the area
45:02
Speaker 1: is gonna dinner plate or just chip away or fall
45:05
Speaker 1: away or fracture, um, sometimes it is best to just
45:08
Speaker 1: hit it and get rid of it and then find
45:10
Speaker 1: that better ice underneath. If you think the ice is
45:12
Speaker 1: thick enough, right, and you know you are using your
45:16
Speaker 1: arms to be sure, But like with any kind of
45:20
Speaker 1: climbing sport, most of the work is being done by
45:22
Speaker 1: your legs. Yeah. Yeah, you want most of the weight
45:26
Speaker 1: on your legs for sure. Angle no no, no, no no,
45:31
Speaker 1: But that does happen. So you know you're talking about
45:34
Speaker 1: one fall, does it all? With ice climbing, that is
45:37
Speaker 1: pretty true unless you have like a good repelling system
45:41
Speaker 1: going on, uh, and you're clipped into some good ice
45:44
Speaker 1: crews that have a good purchase into the ice. If
45:47
Speaker 1: you fall, um, you're going to be in big trouble
45:50
Speaker 1: because usually when you fall while your ice climbing, a
45:53
Speaker 1: lot of ice falls with you. So even if the
45:56
Speaker 1: impact with the ground doesn't hurt you, something else falling
45:59
Speaker 1: on you might. So don't forget. Your tools are really
46:02
Speaker 1: really they're as sharp as they look. And um, I
46:05
Speaker 1: was reading about the ray competition and how I think
46:08
Speaker 1: within the last couple of years, Um, there was some
46:11
Speaker 1: guy who lacerated his arm so badly and kept climbing
46:15
Speaker 1: that they had to shovel out the bloody snow at
46:17
Speaker 1: the foot of the climb. That's unsightly. No one wants
46:20
Speaker 1: to see that, and he wasn't the only one to
46:22
Speaker 1: do that, Like some guy had to go to the hospital.
46:24
Speaker 1: If you wor it might have been the same guy
46:25
Speaker 1: with another laceration. So the tools are really dangerous. And
46:28
Speaker 1: that's a really big difference from what I understand between
46:30
Speaker 1: rock climbing and ice climbing. If you rock climb, falling
46:34
Speaker 1: is it's not great, but it's not unheard of. You
46:38
Speaker 1: might even say it's kind of a common thing to
46:40
Speaker 1: fall during rock climbing, and the chances are you're probably
46:44
Speaker 1: going to survive it with a recoverable injury, if you're
46:47
Speaker 1: injured at all. With ice climbing, it's very infrequent that
46:51
Speaker 1: people fall because when you do fall ice climbing, it's
46:54
Speaker 1: a really big deal and you can you can be
46:57
Speaker 1: seriously hurt or killed from that fall. And I mean,
47:00
Speaker 1: look at those icicles. Yeah. There was a woman named
47:03
Speaker 1: Um Sue Not who was a premier ice climber. Um.
47:08
Speaker 1: She and a woman named Carrie McCarry McNeil, another premier
47:11
Speaker 1: ice climber. They were lost. As far as I know,
47:14
Speaker 1: they've never been found. Back in two thousands, six m
47:17
Speaker 1: Mount Foraker in Denali National Park, in Alaska and Mount
47:21
Speaker 1: Forker has something called the Infinite um. Oh, I can't believe.
47:26
Speaker 1: I don't remember the name of it. Um fang. I
47:31
Speaker 1: think man pretty good band name. I know it's a
47:36
Speaker 1: great it's a great name for it. But um, anyway,
47:39
Speaker 1: they were lost on this. It's like one of the
47:42
Speaker 1: one of the hardest, most difficult climbs ice climbs in
47:46
Speaker 1: the world. And these two like the kind where you
47:49
Speaker 1: have to like, um, you know, camp out on the
47:52
Speaker 1: side of a mountain over multiple days and nights to
47:56
Speaker 1: like make these climbs. This is like some serious stuff
47:59
Speaker 1: and um, these two were perfectly capable of doing it.
48:02
Speaker 1: They just happened to get caught in some bad weather
48:05
Speaker 1: and have never been heard from again. But this is
48:08
Speaker 1: in two thousand six and eight years before in a competition.
48:12
Speaker 1: It might have been at ray Uh. Sue Not was
48:14
Speaker 1: climbing and she was injured when she fell and some
48:18
Speaker 1: ice speared her. Wow, yeah it does. It's called the
48:24
Speaker 1: Infinite Spur. Yeah. So, um they were climbing the Infinite
48:28
Speaker 1: Spurring got lost. In two thou six was a bad
48:30
Speaker 1: year for ice climbing deaths in general. Not only were
48:34
Speaker 1: Sue Not and Karen McNeil lost, but a guy named
48:38
Speaker 1: Harry Burger, Okay, well he was lost in just like
48:44
Speaker 1: a routine training practice. That was just a freak accident.
48:49
Speaker 1: And I read about it and they said there was
48:51
Speaker 1: no amount of training, there is no amount of preparation,
48:54
Speaker 1: there's no amount of caution that could have saved him.
48:57
Speaker 1: This was just a Greek accident that happened. But he
49:01
Speaker 1: was trapped under ice, like a hundred and fifty tons
49:04
Speaker 1: of it fell on him. He was while he was
49:06
Speaker 1: climbing it. And I mean this guy was world class
49:10
Speaker 1: from what I read. So we're soon not and Karen
49:12
Speaker 1: McNeil and these are just this is a really really
49:16
Speaker 1: dangerous extreme sport. Yeah, I mean that's that's the thrill
49:20
Speaker 1: with any extreme sport deep down, as you know you
49:23
Speaker 1: could die that day. You don't want to, but that's
49:26
Speaker 1: part of what makes you know, that adrenaline kick up
49:29
Speaker 1: to such a level. Yeah that, uh, that these people
49:32
Speaker 1: do those things. Yeah, it's true. And I mean, you know,
49:35
Speaker 1: you're in the mountains and there's a lot of chance
49:38
Speaker 1: for things like avalanches to happen, and um ice can
49:42
Speaker 1: fall on you. You can hurt yourself with your tool
49:44
Speaker 1: you can lose your tool, you can get caught in
49:46
Speaker 1: a blizzard. Um, the wind can get so bad that
49:49
Speaker 1: it can blow you off the mountain. There's just a
49:52
Speaker 1: lot of things, and there's definitely you know, precautions you
49:54
Speaker 1: can take, like, um, if you were an ice climber,
49:57
Speaker 1: you have an avalanche beakin with you. It's just part
50:00
Speaker 1: of your gear. You have a first aid kit with you,
50:03
Speaker 1: that's part of your gear too. You know how to
50:05
Speaker 1: use your ice cruise and you're clipped in everywhere. Um,
50:08
Speaker 1: there's a lot of precautions you can take. But it
50:10
Speaker 1: is an inherently dangerous sport for sure, of course, and
50:14
Speaker 1: you always need to remember that you've got to get
50:17
Speaker 1: back down unless you're like being helicoptered out or something,
50:20
Speaker 1: which I don't even know if it's a thing. It's
50:23
Speaker 1: probably a thing for the richies. But you know you're
50:25
Speaker 1: going down as well, and you, uh, you gotta plan
50:28
Speaker 1: out your day so that you're doing that safely and
50:31
Speaker 1: at the right time of day. And um, you know
50:34
Speaker 1: they always say that even hiking downhill can be tougher
50:38
Speaker 1: on you than hiking up hill, right, because you're already
50:40
Speaker 1: worn out at this point and that's when mistakes can happen.
50:44
Speaker 1: So uh, and we keep saying experience ice climbers. I
50:48
Speaker 1: guess you always have to do something for the first time,
50:51
Speaker 1: but it seems a little redundant to say experienced ice climber,
50:54
Speaker 1: you know, right, yeah, yeah, you're definitely doing it for
50:58
Speaker 1: the first multiple times with a very knowledgeable guy who's
51:02
Speaker 1: telling you how to do everything, and you're probably already
51:04
Speaker 1: an experienced rock climber. I doubt if you start off
51:07
Speaker 1: with ice climbing, it would have would probably be really weird.
51:09
Speaker 1: I wonder if anyone ever has, you know, like I
51:12
Speaker 1: never climbed a rock before, but look at that frozen waterfall.
51:15
Speaker 1: But one thing I'm not I would like to be
51:18
Speaker 1: able to do this. I don't know if I ever will.
51:20
Speaker 1: But one thing that really caught my attention was you know,
51:22
Speaker 1: when you're fueling up in the morning before your ice climb,
51:25
Speaker 1: you want to eat um. What I saw was like,
51:28
Speaker 1: think the Trucker's special breakfast at a diner pr and eggs,
51:33
Speaker 1: and I could I could get into that kind of
51:35
Speaker 1: sport where that's what you eat, and they're like, bring
51:37
Speaker 1: food that doesn't freeze, so don't bring bananas, bring Oreo
51:40
Speaker 1: cookies instead. I was like, I really like this ice climbing. Wow.
51:45
Speaker 1: You know the It's sadly not there anymore because Atlanta
51:48
Speaker 1: has just really changed in the past fifteen years. But
51:51
Speaker 1: there used to be a place called Austin Avenue Buffet.
51:54
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever went there. It was
51:56
Speaker 1: a long long time ago. It's on obviously Austin Avenue,
51:59
Speaker 1: which is not kind of chey, but this place was
52:01
Speaker 1: a great dumpy dive and they served food and they
52:05
Speaker 1: had in the mornings, they had the painter Special, which
52:08
Speaker 1: was eggs, bacon, toast, and a tall Boy PBR. I
52:13
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of funny. Wow was the food good? No, okay,
52:19
Speaker 1: I'm swimming. I didn't eat. I just drink. I guess
52:22
Speaker 1: I was in there in the morning for eggs painting.
52:25
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool place. So so there was one
52:28
Speaker 1: other thing I wanted to mention. Two. There's a very
52:30
Speaker 1: controversial side to um ice climbing. The ice climbing community
52:35
Speaker 1: and the rock climbing community are frequently one and the same,
52:38
Speaker 1: but also separate in some ways. And one of the
52:41
Speaker 1: ways they are separate and is that sometimes ice climbers
52:45
Speaker 1: will say hey, I'm I'm gonna practice, but I don't
52:48
Speaker 1: feel like driving up to the mountains. Um, so I'm
52:50
Speaker 1: gonna use my tools on a rock climb, which is
52:54
Speaker 1: called dry tooling, and it has all sorts of negative
52:57
Speaker 1: effects on a rock climbing course. Um. It can chip
53:02
Speaker 1: away ledges and all sorts of stuff. It leaves scars
53:05
Speaker 1: on the rocks. It's it's rock climbers do not like that.
53:09
Speaker 1: So there's kind of like a little bit of a
53:11
Speaker 1: civil war in the climbing community between people who um
53:14
Speaker 1: rock climbing people who dry tool climb and uh get
53:20
Speaker 1: the impression. Dry toolers are not very well liked and
53:24
Speaker 1: sounds kind of dirty too, dry tool Okay, UM, oh,
53:31
Speaker 1: one other thing, since we're just throwing stuff out at
53:34
Speaker 1: this point, I ran across the website called jyvass anchors
53:37
Speaker 1: dot com and it basically is just this blog that
53:40
Speaker 1: makes fun of people's ridiculously dangerous and ill advised anchors
53:45
Speaker 1: for their climbs, like you know, things they're um they're
53:49
Speaker 1: they're um connected into with their their carabineers. And all
53:55
Speaker 1: that was verbatim the description of the blog, including all
54:00
Speaker 1: the us I believe it. You do not all, Right,
54:04
Speaker 1: listen to ice climbing once and for all, shall we? Yeah,
54:07
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about ice climbing, there's
54:09
Speaker 1: a lot to go read and then try and make
54:12
Speaker 1: sure you do it safely. So there you go, and
54:15
Speaker 1: in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
54:20
Speaker 1: call this Gifted and talented. Uh, this is great. Hey, guys,
54:23
Speaker 1: I'm a Gifted and Talented GT specialist at an elementary
54:28
Speaker 1: school and my students range from kindergarten to fifth grade.
54:31
Speaker 1: We have an ongoing side project that was inspired by you.
54:34
Speaker 1: We have two posters where we've created a list of
54:36
Speaker 1: band names and song names and someone here's something they
54:39
Speaker 1: say that'd be a good band name, I write it down.
54:41
Speaker 1: They do the same thing for songs. They also have
54:44
Speaker 1: decided the genre of some of these bands, which is
54:46
Speaker 1: your job. Uh. They even took it a step further
54:48
Speaker 1: like the GT kids often do and decided they need
54:52
Speaker 1: to create a synopsis of the songs when they think
54:55
Speaker 1: of one. I'm just picturing kindergarteners doing this and it
54:58
Speaker 1: delights me to know. End Really, So, here's some of
55:01
Speaker 1: the band names and what genre used. Mirrors not bad
55:07
Speaker 1: Mr ma'am, I love that one. That's a great one. Yes,
55:11
Speaker 1: she said, that's a pop group, ancient falls, she said,
55:16
Speaker 1: either well, she said, alternative or maybe jazz. But you
55:19
Speaker 1: are the authority, dumb and dangerous. Ah, that sounds like
55:24
Speaker 1: an old man band. Okay. And then the loud mouths
55:29
Speaker 1: or just loud mouths, which she said is clearly punk
55:33
Speaker 1: it is or um yeah, punk, post punk, alternative loud
55:40
Speaker 1: mouths yea. She closes with this, knowing these kids they
55:43
Speaker 1: will take on one of these band names one day
55:45
Speaker 1: and become the most successful band ever seen. My students
55:48
Speaker 1: are absolutely amazing, so I'm not surprised by anything they do.
55:51
Speaker 1: I enjoy listening while I'm completing all the hours of
55:54
Speaker 1: paperwork apt to do. Keep up the good work and
55:56
Speaker 1: big big shout out to Angie kind of and heritage
56:01
Speaker 1: elementary gifted and talented kids. That's awesome. Thanks Ms Cannell
56:06
Speaker 1: and your class for writing in those are awesome. What
56:09
Speaker 1: was my favorite? Chuck again, Mr ma'am, that's a good one.
56:14
Speaker 1: That's so good. Uh. If you want to get in
56:17
Speaker 1: touch with this, like Ms Cannell did and her class,
56:21
Speaker 1: you can send us an email. Wrap it up. Spank
56:24
Speaker 1: it on the bottom and send it off to Stuff
56:26
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
56:32
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56:34
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56:39
Speaker 1: favorite shows.