It seems that this year our ice climbing tower project is finally in a good shape. I took my first few lines a few days ago. The accumulation of ice has been good. It seems that we might even, atleast in principle, get the tower to the shape required by national championships, at least from the ice perspective. As you can see from the images below, it has icicles, it has over hangs and lots of difficult ice. So, it’s a good practice. While it seems good, the project has suffered from several difficulties also this year. The pipes have frozen several times, we have lost the recharger couple of times and the tower has been about to freeze inside (i.e. no way to up, except by leading).

Update 20.1.2011: Added another gallery of images showing the tower at night. We’re climbing there with a few of my friends. And for those of you, who’re interested, the specifications:

Structure: Old construction crane
Height: ~24m (the tower) + ~8m (quarry) = ~32m

Few images from our tower (January 2011):

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Few images from our tower at night (January 2011):

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Picture above: Yes it’s a windmill up there.

The tower itself is an old construction crane hull that we have upholstered with a cloth to prevent the water (and ice) entering inside the hull. As there’s no electricity nearby we have put together massive battery capacity (48 pieces of 110kg lead acid batteries) which are charged by a windmill. During the winter we pump the water from the nearby quarry to the top of the tower through sprinklers. It takes about two to three weeks of cold weather to freeze up into climbing condition. There’s about 30 meters of steep and pretty challenging ice. In fact Oulu, which probably is the flattest place in Finland, is the only place in the whole country where there’s enough challenging ice to hold national ice climbing championships. There’s been a couple of year’s gap between the championships (due some electricity problems, including a burned generator etc.) but now it seems likely that we’re able to arrange the championships during next season.

Few images of our tower:

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At some point our plan was to get our selves in to Skibotn valley and climb the Hourglass fall there (see Almost a serious accident article). Since we found some very prominent falls, up to 300 meters high, with much easier access, from Kåfjord valley we’ve changed our plans. Still I feel it kind of tempting to go for Hourglass as well, and perhaps we’ll try that on our way back as well.

I’m going to take plenty of photos and write a detailed trip report once we’ll get back from there. There’s a slight chance that I will post some on the spot thoughts too. Won’t promise though. It might happen that I just don’t want to spoil my time out there on front of computer or writing posts on my mobile.

More information:

• Kåfjord in Wikipedia
• Google maps: Arctic Norway ice
• Picassa web album: Ari / Kåfjord 2008

Location details:

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Saturday was modest, just about -25, but on Sunday it got colder. The lowest figure we had was -29.5 (measured on our car’s thermometer few kilometers away from the spot), it were most likely even colder down on the bottom of Korouoma canyon.

As many of you may know cold makes climbing difficult in several ways. First of all ice is very hard and it carks really easily. As a result screws tend to fracture ice while screwing, screwing requires more strength, large chunks of ice will detach frequently due to use of ice tools, which posses danger not only climber himself, but anyone below as well, and it requires more skill to build secure belay anchors on the wall etc. Second, cold means freezing, freezing fingers and feats, fingers feeling numb and all the pain related having frozen limbs. In other words one better stay warm.

Few tips for climbing in cold:

• Use only sharp screws. The ones that have seen some stone may bite reasonably well on warmer ice, but will just fracture the cold ice making the placement of ice protection almost impossible.
• An extra large down jacket is a absolute must, even though I had one (+one layer of fleece, two layers of merino wool +extra warm climbing boots) I were having hard time to keep myself warm.
• I would think that a soft shell would do much better than Gore-Tex as an out most layer. Unfortunately I don’t have one and can’t give you a real firsthand experience about it. In theory besides being warmer, soft shell doesn’t have the freezing problem related to Gore-Tex. In other words if temperature is below -20 to -25 Gore-Tex pores freeze and doesn’t let vaporized water out as they should, thus resulting a small internal snow rain inside your jacket.
• Use eye protection, cold ice results plenty of small razor sharp ice bits that poses serious danger to your eye sight.
• Chemical heat pads were a real life saver in a glove while climbing the first 20 meters until you’ve really warmed up.
• Make a good warm up before starting to climb. Swing your hands; take a short walk to uphill etc.
• Have a good thermos filled with extra hot (and sweet – plenty of energy) drink and remember to eat enough to ensure that your body has the energy not just for climbing but to keep you warm – heating takes more energy in cold conditions.
• Where possible and in case you don’t absolutely want to lead climb, you might consider setting a permanent belay position on higher ground and do belaying at the top of the fall, as it is much warmer there than at the bottom of the canyon.

The positive side on cold conditions is the fact that you don’t usually need to worry about staying dry. Water floats less and tends to freeze directly on top of your clothes. As an extra plus you don’t sweat that much either, which again means drier feel.

Location details:

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The author - Juho Risku

I have been thinking about putting up a blog related to ice climbing for some time now. Though I really can’t credit myself of being the best, or most daring, hard core, climber around here or even close to the top row, I love climbing frozen waterfalls, I love the bite of the cold winter air, I love the feeling being high and seeing sights that most people simply can’t because they can’t climb, I love the exercise, physical nature of climbing ice, I love the feeling to fear, wining the fear and I certainly like taking risks – though not too much.  There for it was kind of natural for me to start blogging about ice climbing. I’m just trying to share some of the love I have for the sport of climbing frozen waterfalls.

I’ve been climbing for several years now, almost entirely ice. The purpose of this blog is to share my modest experiences about ice climbing, feelings, climbing spots, related equipment and techniques, tips and tricks, and hopefully inspire few other authors to join in this blog to share their knowledge so that fellow climbers could benefit from what they’ve experienced.

Though this blog is mostly concentrating on ice climbing, I’m occasionally writing on related topics which interest me, such as winter hikes, randone skiing, snowboarding, mountaineering, snow safety issues and such. Perhaps during the summer times, when there’s less ice, there will be few not so ice related posts as well. I’m also warmly inviting fellow climbers to write.