Hardwear Sessions

Skiing or Ice Climbing?

By Will Meinen

Here in the Rockies it's an awfully long winter, and it's a good idea to have more than one type of arrow in your quiver.

I use to exclusively ice climb in the winter. I was young and I loved being scared shitless. I thought it gave me character. Post holing through waste deep snow on the approaches, screaming barfies at the belays, brittle ice with no protection, and always wondering if or when the loaded snow-bowl would cut loose and come avalanching down. It's a masochistic practice at best.

Just as time will smooth out the roughest Scotch whiskey, time has had its maturing effects on me too. Sometime last year while I was slogging through the snow on my way to another lonely ice climb that never sees the sunlight all I could think about was how much fun my skier friends were having shredding their way down the same snow that I was having a horrible time trudging up.