Obsession and Ingenuity, Part III: Farming Ice in Farm Country
“Hey Jim, how would you feel about icing those things up and letting us climb on them?”
“Hey Jim, how would you feel about icing those things up and letting us climb on them?”
Rarely does the ephemeral feel of ice climbing extend into the realm of granite slab climbing. But when it does, an evolution can happen.
Ueli Steck shares stories and photographs from his October tour of the Canadian Rockies, where he established committing new lines with Simon Anthamatten.
Joe Josephson, Montana’s most vocal ice proponent and author of Winter Dance, speaks about the precarious access to Hyalite Canyon: “Often in life, you don’t realize how good you have it until it’s gone–or at least under the threat of being taken away.”
Three women tackle a new 950-meter free rock line in the Karakorum, where they discover that friendship and solidarity are the keys to success and survival.
The fixtures of Silver Gulch–a bar and microbrewery in Fox, Alaska–had something to talk about: an 152-foot ice blob rising out of the flattest part of Alaska. What they didn’t know: The Ghost Raven Ice Tower was a proving ground for the precocious.
The three months (if you’re lucky) of joy for most Midwestern ice climbers are filled with long, sleepless weekend drives to Ontario, Northern Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula… But what about lunch breaks?
Welcome to Canada’s best-kept chilly secret, where “the constant northwest winds result in some of the wildest ice formations imaginable: 10-foot umbrellas and fragile curtains waiting to kill anyone foolish enough to try climbing.”
Over ninety-two days, Lionel Daudet succeeded in circumnavigating 700 kilometers around the Hautes Alps province of France, ticking 292 peaks and gaining more than 70000 meters of elevation. Here, his reflections and photographs.
Eliza Kubarska and David Kaszlikowski load their kayaks with climbing gear and an excitement for unclimbed terrain in this mini-adventure to Greenland’s highest sea cliff.