Cool story and photos from the season.

Post your coolest stories or photos from the season. 

Jonesing for steep ice leads to questionable decisions...

Rare desert ice. Some exploratory FA's and the usual shenanigans...

I TRed some ice at the Ouray ice park with some rented gear. I thought it was fun.

Am I an ice climber now?

"Sam, I'm convinced there's like hundreds of ice lines in the desert that all the old guys are keeping secret.

Cory N wrote:

I TRed some ice at the Ouray ice park with some rented gear. I thought it was fun.

Am I an ice climber now?

Yes. Welcome brother Cory   

 Not the greatest story but I like how this image turned out.  My buddy and I got shut down by open water trying to get up one drainage so we made an unroped* ascent of a long easy grade 2 that neither of us would have normally bothered with.

(*Pedantic rant - I hate it when people use unroped and solo interchangeably.  Since we were two, we didn't solo the route, rope or otherwise.  Jim Beyer or Silvia Vidal solo very hard - with a rope)

alex Mankouski wrote:

Sam, I'm convinced there's like hundreds of ice lines in the desert that all the old guys are keeping secret.

Yeah, or they never thought to bother. I've talked to a lot of the old guys in my region and there are definitely some things that they never knew about. Modern mapping technology and weather forecasts can be pretty helpful.

Either that or I'm one of the old guys, in which case yeah, never will I post the location on MP. But if you live in the area and DM me I would be happy to help you out and point you to where the good ones are (or can be when we get a good cold snap).

Very cool photo Jake.

First climb of the year for me was my only really good day. A buddy and I did our first ascent of the black dike. I lead pitch 2 and 3, it went super well. Peter Doucette was climbing fafnir and snapped a bunch of photos of me. It ended up being one of my best climbing days ever. What an awesome climb  

Got to climb some more Zion ice this year. The lack of snow this year made the ice thinner than usual but the approaches were easy as can be! 

Sam, for sure I'm down. I live in Salt Lake, did a bunch of climbing—38 days of ice this year—but it's mostly well-known stuff because I don't really know conditions and just have a third sense for what's in yet.

Don't tempt me.

alex Mankouski wrote:

Sam, for sure I'm down. I live in Salt Lake, did a bunch of climbing—38 days of ice this year—but it's mostly well-known stuff because I don't really know conditions and just have a third sense for what's in yet.

I live in Oregon and TBH I don't think the rarely forming or hard to get to stuff is worth the drive when you have so much close to SLC. Sounds like you need to get after that Zion stuff or GBNP in spring. If you're headed this direction send me a message and I'll let you know if anything is worth looking at. 

Scottish conditions somewhere in Montana

From Switzerland and Austria 

that looks really good!

Great times over lake Superior testing my ice axe - I designed and machined. Going to build a demo fleet and tour ice fests next year.

Also got to show Jeff Mercier around Pictured Rocks. Absolute technician

Shot by Tim Banfield - can't upload full quality pics

stay cool

@Houghton Gremlin: These are all great, but number 3 is my favourite ice climbing picture ever so far, so pretty! 

Very cool.

No epic trips for me, but I was most stoked to get my 12 yr old son on some ice for his first time.  We started off at the ice tower at Peabody, and while he had fun, he struggled a bit.  This was our second year at the MI Icefest, but 2024 was no climbing.  This year we got hooked up with a father and son from MN, he was able to get out  for a bit of an epic while I was doing a class.  They broke trail through the deep snow, to an untouched small falls.  He got some instruction from the father & son, and got some laps in.  He told me it was his favorite part of the Icefest, and next year, wants to go back to just hike and climb the various falls around Pictured Rocks.  I'd say he is absolutely hooked.  

I don't ice climb anymore and was never super good at it. But I got up some shit, under my own power, on the lead. It was a satisfying run.

Seeing all the amazingl shit you guys do now is so cool. I love it! Thanks.

The word rad used to get thrown around a lot, till it lost all meaning. But you guys put the rad back in rad