When waterfall ice climbing, there is constantly falling ice. When you swing your ice axe, you are always ducking your head to make sure the ice doesn’t hit you in the face. The goal is for the ice to hit your helmet or miss you completely. We had a guy in our group turning his head to the side instead of ducking his head. He ended up with a bloody lip from being hit in the face with a large chunk of ice. This was a constant challenge all day long, as ice was falling with almost every climb.I was wearing the Grivel G-12 crampons,my normal mountaineering ones. Crampons are metal spikes that attach to your climbing boots to stick into and grip the ice or hard snow you are climbing. These mountianeering crampons proved to a huge liability on the climb. The G-14 is Grivel’s ice climbing crampon. I highly discourage using the G-12 on technical ice climbing routes. The front points are not made to grip the ice like you need them to. I promised my self never again would I use my G-12’s for ice climbing. The weather really became a problem during the course as well. Not because of the snow, which was coming down, but because it was -5 to -10 the entire time. If you weren’t climbing, you were frozen. This is not like ice climbing in Colorado where you may be able to climb in 30-40 temperatures. Ice climbing in the UP is very cold.

I was a little disappointed because I was told we were going to learn and practice lead climbing. (Lead climbing is a climbing technique used to ascend a route when no top rope exists. When lead climbing, the lead climber ties to one end of a rope and is belayed by their partner. The climber then ascends the route, occasionally placing protection for safety in the event of a fall. The protection will consist of ice screws or other devices. Distances between pieces of protection can range from five to forty feet or more. On average the distance will probably be between five and fifteen feet. If the leader falls, they can fall twice the distance to the last ice screw. If a leader is ten feet above the last piece of protection, the fall will be at least twenty feet. However, due to the use of dynamic ropes it will be more like 25 feet.) While we went over this as well as other climbing and protection techniques, we did not practice lead climbing.

Overall, I thought the advanced course was disappointing because they covered only basic to intermediate climbing techniques. I also did not get a chance to personally practice all that we were taught. However, I would still recommend the ice fest for anyone who wants a new experience. For the one who doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on gear to try it out or is interested in ice climbing, this is a great opportunity. The Ice Fest also had a demo clinic for the public who didn’t want to take a class. During the clinic, they supplied gear to anyone who wanted to try ice climbing for free. The one problem was they had hundreds of people. Consequently, there were long lines waiting to climb at the demo. If you want a lot of climbing time, the classes are the way to go.

The Munsing Ice Fest is comming up Febuary 2-4 they have ice climbing training, professional lectures, gear presentations and more. I plan on going and taking the advanced ice climbing course. Spots were filling up fast so if you plan to go act soon. I will post a review of the festaval once i return. If you would like to find out more about the Ice Fest click the link below.

http://downwindsports.com/index.php?page=ice_fest