Dear Ice Climbing,
We’ve been together for a long time.
As your season approaches, I watch the snowline creep down the mountain. First, cornices on the r idgeline, then dusted trees and snow y val leys. The freeze/ thaw cycle sends melt-water into bowls and onto faces. As winter progresses, the water freezes. Smears grow into fatter water fa l l ice climbs. I want to gear up, but a small part of me wants summer to last one more week.
One of my favourite things is to swing a tool into an unlikely “hold” with my legs stemmed between daggers and doubt in my mind, only to have the steel pick sink into a solid stick. Nevertheless, f lashbacks to last year’s ice season sends shivers down my spine. The grasping of a season’s change and the hanging up of my rock shoes always gets me. Seasons pass quickly in Canada, one minute it’s shirts off on south facing overhangs and the next it is crampons and puff y coats on frozen cascades. Ice climbing, it’s not you, it’s me.
If only summer could hold on, but I guess that’s what road tr ips and Januar ies in Spain are for, to chase more days of strawhat-wearing weather. Once the ice gear comes out and I embrace you, it’s game on. First are the thin slabs of ice, where stubby ice screws are a climber’s best fr iend. Then it’s the December, shor t day, short-approach moderates. By the New Year, the endurance is back and dodging fal ling ice is second nature. There are donkey trails into the best lines, snow stabilit y is good and ever yone who thought they’d ski has come around to swinging the tools. Ice climbing, you always get ever yone coming back for more.
The mid-winter blues gets me on unexpectedly chilly days, the ones when the ice is colder than ice should be. When I’ve worn through the year’s new gloves, the dr y-f inish on my ropes seems to have taken the day of f and I’ve forgotten the hot chocolate at home. Belaying my partner up the last pitch, I bur y my head into the slings that are clipped to screws and say to myself, “Why aren’t I clipping bolts somewhere warm? ” No of fense ice climbing, but sometimes I hate you. But the hate is always trumped when my par tner pul ls out extra gloves from the bottom of their pack or I catch the sunset of f mountain tops or when I get home and have the much-awaited post-climb beverage.
I’ve hated you more than once, I’m probably not alone and I’ l l hate you again, but I always end the day loving you. There’s something about climbing frozen water and facing cold weather with fr iends. Seeing smiles in icy air, ever yone with frost y hair. Knowing that what I’m climbing will one day be gone, that one day you’ll be gone. As the snow creeps down the mountain out my window, I ready myself for the inevitable. Ice climbing, we have a complicated relationship, but under al l the layers, I love you.