I have always considered my self as a pretty careful ice climber. I try to put in protection pretty often and climb well within my abilities. It’s been years since I’ve taken a lead fall on ice. Then all of a sudden I took two couple of weeks ago, while climbing in Tamokdalen, Norway. Well, [...]
Someone at rockclimbing.com asked about how to rack slings nicely. While this is not a big secret, and most of you probably are already aware of it, I decided to put up short instructions post about it. Here’s how I do it: Method one (+slightly faster, +slightly easier to undo, +can be used on short [...]
Ice climbing on a multi pitch route opens an entirely new world. You get to places where you other vice wouldn’t, but you also need a lot more knowledge to make such climb safe and efficient. One of most important things on a multi pitch route is the belay stations between the pitches. One needs [...]
I’m writing an article about belay stations on multi pitch climbs (will be released soon, once I’ll get the images taken). While writing it I realized that my autonomous ability, if there ever was some, to create a clove hitch was gone. Especially what comes my left hand, the clove hitch was simply lost. While [...]
There was recently a discussion at www.rockclimbing.com about how to do a balanced V-thread (you can see the discussion here). As one of the speculated methods was a long prusik cord combined with a sliding x -type of setup I decided to test it out. The test results can be summarized as a success. I found it [...]
It’s snowing, finally the long waited winter seems to be at reach. Just a few weeks, but the end of November at latest, and there’s enough good ice for climbing at Korouoma, Finland. It’s going to be exciting winter, there will be of course plenty of climbing at Korouoma and the usual trip to northern [...]
Some time ago I reviewed Wild Country Helium quickdraws. At the time I just couldn’t find anything negative on them. I’ve used the quickdraws happily ever after. They’ve been great, but since the first article I have discovered some weaknesses too. The realization of the fact that quite a few pieces of quality gear also [...]
Abalakov thread, named after great Soviet climber Vitaly Abalakov, is one of the great mountain safety inventions. It’s also known as a V-thread. Generally speaking Abalakov thread is fairly easy to create, doesn’t require any expensive gear to be left behind and, when created and used properly, it’s safe. Here’s a short introduction to Abalakov thread in a way I’m used [...]
While I’ve been waiting to get the schedule of our this year’s “expedition” nailed down, I thought that it would be good time to refresh some of the good memories from the last years ice climbing “expedition”. Luckily it seems that this type of ”expedition” with Jari is turning in to a yearly tradition. During the trip we climbed three ice [...]
Do you consider starting ice climbing? Do you wonder what kind of gear you should get and how much does it cost? Well, this post is for those of you who do. Though, ice climbing is being placed in to extreme end of extreme sports, in some circles, even more so than rock climbing, it [...]
