Ice climbing
Carrie posted in Recreation on January 12th, 2009
Yesterday I got out for the first ice climbing of my season. The natural falls have been going for a while but Gish’s towers are only reaching a climbable height now. The 4 towers are about 20-30 ft tall but the cold temperatures meant that it was very difficult to get your ice axes to stick. When it’s this cold the ice is too brittle so pieces just flake off rather than allowing the axe pick or crampons to dig deep. Usually ice climbing season is at the end of winter but when you’re running a business I guess it has be all season. But the day was beautifully sunny and only -30 with no wind so it was actually really nice. I went up 2 towers and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be (i.e. really difficult). My new mountaineering boots worked great and I’m really happy with them even though they’re super ugly:)
The towers are built by pumping water through hoses that are attached to these crude tripods and then freeze in place as the water lands around them. The water comes from the hotsprings and actually has to be cooled first before reaching the tower or else would melt all the ice…something I find hard to believe since it’s been 30 below for the last 7 weeks. Whatever, I’m not building them. Gish plans to add another 10-20 feet to each tower and include bridges between them and ice caves and lots of formations to explore. Should be fun!
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