Stuff You Should Know - How Ice Climbing Works

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

A few decades ago, some people who liked to climb mountains decided they wanted to make it even harder and ice climbing was born. If you think rock climbing is difficult, put on your base layer and join Josh and Chuck on the glacier. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, people in Vancouver and Portland, we're coming to see you. In March. Okay, did I step on you? No, no, I stepped on you, I think, man.

All right, well, this is as clunky as we usually are. We are gonna be coming to those two fair cities that I learned don't have direct flights yesterday, and I can't wait, regardless. So we're gonna be in Vancouver on Sunday, March 29th at the Chan Center. That's right, we're kicking it up a notch there, so we need your support.

Yeah, for real. And then the next day, we're really kicking it up a notch, maybe two in Portland. We're gonna be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March 30th. That's right, and we need your support there too, Portland, because, again, these are bigger venues, we're giving it a whirl.

Don't put egg on our faces, for God's sake. Yeah, yeah. So you could get all sorts of information, you can buy tickets, everything you need, just go to sysklive.com, and we'll see you in March. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. ["I Heart Radio"]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and there's Jerry Abominable Snowman rolling. I'm sorry, Abominable Snowperson rolling. I think she's more of a Burger Meister Meister Burger. You think so? Yeah, I guess you're absolutely right, Chuck.

Who would be the Abominable Snowman of the three of us? Oh, I think clearly me. You think so? I'm the most horrific. Yes, but your attitudes, your general view on life is very much not like that Abominable Snowman. Well, I'm fairly likable too. I'm sort of like the Harry and the Henderson's Bigfoot.

That's right. It's scary looking, but soft on the inside. Okay, so then Jerry's John Lithgow, and I'm one of the trees in a scene. Okay? What was John Lithgow? I missed that. Oh, wait.

Harry and the Henderson's. So I just got confused. Yeah, I guess so. I do remember him being a Harry and the Henderson's, but because of what we're talking about today, I thought you were making a reference to the Stallone. What was that movie where he was like a climber? It wasn't.

No, that was the troll to movie face off. I don't remember. I know what you're talking about. But wasn't John Lithgow in that? I think so, but actually the big twist to all this is I wasn't making a Harry and the Henderson's reference. I was making a Raising Cain reference. Good Lord, this is off the rails.

Cliffhanger. Right. Cliffhanger, that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And John Lithgow was in it. Boom. Right, yeah.

And it was Stallone? Yeah, you know, from the master filmmaker, Rene Harlan. I like Rene Harlan. I don't care what anybody says. I saw The Long Kiss Good Night finally. That's been on your list for 12 years. World-class movie, starting at about this halfway mark. Okay.

Okay. All right. So we're talking ice climbing today. And I guess I should probably start by asking, just verifying, Chuck, have you ever seen ice? I have seen ice. I've never ice climbed. And you know, another funny little thing is,

I don't know if you notice it, my friend Debbie Ronca wrote this from the old House of Works website. Yep. That's quality stuff. She puts out the good stuff. Well, she does. She did a great job researching,

but it's just funny knowing Debbie, she is about as far away you can get from someone who might ice climb. But wasn't she into roller derbies? Sure. Okay, so I mean... So there's a sense of adventure. Yeah.

But I was surprised she did roller derby. Okay, I gotcha. So it's a surprise she did roller derby. Yeah, there's no way she's gonna ice climb. No. I don't even think she doesn't like the cold weather. There's nothing about it. Even from what I can understand from ice climbing,

I mean, we're far from experts. We just did some research on ice climbing, never ice climbed before, I haven't either. And we'll probably get some stuff from them, but please be forgiving. We're trying our best here. But from what I can tell, even rock climbers don't typically ice climb.

They are a very niche cadre. I think if you're an ice climber, you started out as a rock climber. But just because you're a rock climber does not automatically mean you can be an ice climber. They seem similar at first, but when you really start to dig in, the nuance between the two is pretty significant

when you're out there on the face of a glacier. Yeah, and I also think that there are plenty of rock climbers who just wanna go like shirt off or tank top and shorts and not mess. Yeah, cause part of ice climbing is it's really cold. Yeah, it's cold. It sucks. It's equipment heavy.

Yeah. There's a lot of differences. We'll go over some of the differences as they pop up, but just suffice to say that if you're familiar with rock climbing, that doesn't automatically mean you're gonna be familiar with ice climbing. No, and I don't think you need to sweat getting details wrong because there's probably

like six ice climbers, Max, who might listen to this show. Yeah. Oh, I think that's a generous number. Have you seen the free solo documentary yet? No, I haven't, didn't it? It was either up for an Oscar or won an Oscar. I think it won a couple of years ago. Yeah, no, I haven't seen it.

Really, really, really good. I'm sure I would faint though, just watching it. You know how I am. It's pretty tense. Although I will say this, Chuck, the other day I was on a flight and everything just kept bottoming out. We ran into some terrible weather

and I was just like filing my nails. Like it was nothing. That's why you have like 10 bleeding stubs in front of me. They ache cause I filed them too deeply. All right, ice climbing. Okay, so. Was that the end of your story? Yeah, that was it.

Okay. I just thought you'd appreciate that. No, it was fantastic. You knew how afraid of flying I was and talking about heights and all that. So there is talking about, what was it called, free solo? Yes. What's the name of the documentary?

So that actually applies also kind of to ice climbing as we'll see later. So there are some similarities, but there's also some big differences, but ice climbing really more than anything evolved out of mountaineering. Because when you're climbing an alpine mountain or a mountain that's at a really high altitude,

it's not all just like green grass in the Von Trapp family and birds singing in your ear. It gets really cold up there. There's a lot of snow. There's a lot of ice. And you are going to eventually face a point where either you have to turn back around and go back down and say, well, I'm not gonna summit this mountain.

Or you have to figure how to climb ice. And some of the earliest mountaineers had some real trouble with this. And it wasn't until a guy named Oscar Eckenstein, right? Eckenstein, probably. Thank you, they're very nice. Invented something called crampons that really changed the game, I guess.

Yeah, these are those super cool looking toothed claws that you, originally you would just strap them to your boots. They're like, you know, super sharp cleats, basically that you could strap to your boots. You can still strap them to your boots, but you can also get boots. And of course, I'm gonna kind of pepper this with what I would do.

Okay. If that was a nice climber, I would get the built-ins. Sure. But you can still go buy the ones you strap on as well. I have to say, that's all I saw were the strap-on ones. Oh, really? I think they have them built in now.

I looked, I couldn't find them. I saw some reference to them, but they looked more like actual cleats, whereas like a crampon- Oh, okay. Maybe it's different then. Also, I really hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Is it crampon?

I think so. Okay. So, you know, if you're a mountaineering couple and you need to be very sweet, if your wife asks you to go buy a box of crampons. Right. Gotta do that. So when you, you know, they are cleat-like in design,

but when you really get down to it, I mean, the teeth on those things are really long and really sharp, and they have to be because you have to dig into some serious stuff, some really hard ice with them. So from what I saw, everything I came across was all like the strap-on crampons. Strap-on crampon.

Right. I love it. So when Oscar Eckenstein, I'm sorry, Eckenstein invented the crampons, he was a mountaineer. He was an early proponent of what's called bouldering, which is basically climbing up over big rocks, free soloing. It's kind of even lighter gear than rock climbing.

And this guy was doing this at the turn of the last century. He was actually friends with Alastor Crowley, it turns out. No, he wasn't. Interesting cat though. So Oscar Eckenstein just changed everything with these crampons because suddenly you could walk through, I walk on a glacier at a certain amount of a grade, and it just kind of was the first big step,

and it was a very big step toward this sport, extreme sport of ice climbing. Yeah, and I think, I don't think we mentioned, did we, that before this, you could still do that, but it would take a long, long time because you would have to literally, it's called step cutting, you would have to cut your steps into the ice.

Yeah. As you go, instead of just having these death boots. That's a better name for him. Could you imagine getting kicked with one of those? No, you would just bleed out. Surely that's been done in a movie. Probably in Cliffhanger. Yeah, Death by Crampon, surely.

There is no way that doesn't happen in Cliffhanger. Maybe that's how John Lithgow goes down. I didn't see Cliffhanger. Is it ice or is it just mountain? I think it's both, because I remember on the movie poster, it's like Stallone hanging by one hand from like a Rocky Craig,

but he's wearing like a North Face jacket. So I'm thinking it's a little bit of both. Mix climbing, I think is what they call it. Well, you know, Stallone, he likes to mix it up. He definitely does. So, history-wise, things advanced as they do with all sports. And about 25 years later, 20 years later,

there was a climber named Laurent Gravel, who these first crampons were just sort of on the bottom like cleats. He said, hey, you know what these things need? They need fangs coming out of the toe, out of the front. Like those cowboy boots that have like a switch blade. Totally. You know?

I think Roadhouse had some of those, if I'm not mistaken. Probably. And cliffhanger. There's one point where I think it's Sam Elliott in a bar fight says, right, boot. And there's just a knife in this guy's boot. Sam Elliott is so helpful, man.

He really is. Right, boot. That was just a quote my old friend, my dear departed friend Billy used to say in college, right, boot. That's a good quote. So the fangs coming out of the front really changed things because now they're like, hey,

not only can we walk up fairly steep slopes, but we can get near vertical with this stuff because we can just kick our toes right into this and just climb. And I don't know if you said it or not, but was it Laurent Gravel? Yeah. No, I'm sorry. Yvonne Schwinnard.

No, we've just gotten to him in the 1960s, the swinging 60s. So with that crampon, with the thing that comes out of the front, I've seen it called a point, I've seen it called fangs, but it can be like one point or two points and they have kind of like their ups and downs. We'll talk about them a little bit later.

But now finally, you start to get to what most people think of ice climbing. Cause we should say, it took me a little while to understand just walking basically up a very gentle slope in the mountains over ice is really difficult to do. And that qualifies as ice climbing. That's like a certain grade of a ice climb. What most people think of,

if they've ever heard of ice climbing, is somebody climbing up the sheer face of a glacier. Yeah, with those cool looking death axes. Right. And those are both two different types of what are called climbs. Climbing straight up as a climb, climbing at an angle, a very shallow angle as a climb, just traversing ice, whether using crampons or a pick,

as we'll talk about in a second, or both, those are both qualifies ice climbs. And we got to say that. But now that we've got the fangs in the front of the crampons, so that switch blade and right boot, now you're starting to get into things like vertical climbs where you can climb up the face of a glacier now. Yeah. And previous to Yvonne,

how do you pronounce that, Schrinard? I think so. He went on to become a billionaire because he founded Patagonia, by the way. Right, yeah. Everyone should know this. He's a billionaire plus. He is the guy that said, you know what, we've got these axes that we've been using.

And I think we need to tweak them. Gonna chop off a few inches, go from about 25 inches to about 22 inches. I assume it just made it a little more manageable. That's a big part. Yeah, and then he changed that shape from this, it was previously straight at a really shallow angle at the shaft of the axe.

No, the head, the head was kind of angled down, right? Yeah, but now I think he curved it, right? Yeah, so it looks vicious. Like it looked vicious before, but it was basically a straight line at angle downward. Now it's like angle downward and a straight line, and then it curves back up. Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's cool looking.

And it's got a little barb at the bottom, which I'm not entirely sure what that's for. I think for probably smack an ice around basically, chip and add it away. But so this, the changes to this mountaineering axe were radical enough that it's an entirely different tool now, right? Whereas before the mountaineering axe was,

you kind of use it as a walking cane if it was long enough because it was longer than the ice axes, what are called ice tools. But mostly it was, if you started to slip backward down the ice, you picked the ice in front of you forward and held on. Like you stopped yourself, it's called self-arrest. You kept yourself from sliding down the mountain basically.

That's what your mountaineering axe is for. What your ice tool, your ice axe is for, is to actually, just like the front of the crampons, right? The little, the fangs that come out, these ice tools is an axe you swing above yourself and you basically pull yourself up with until you get another footing with the front of your crampons

and then you use your leg and then use your arm and then use your leg and then little by little, you move up the vertical face of a glacier or more spectacularly, something like a frozen waterfall. Yeah, it looks beautiful and striking and it looks like an awful thing to do. It looks really hard and I think it's, I've read, everywhere I've read it,

it's said that it's even harder than it looks. Yeah, and I love when Debbie said something like, anyone can learn to do this if you, you know, I mean, technically, she's, you know, sort of right, but I think like, it's more like, one percent of you could probably do this. Right, right, exactly. Or want to do this. So now all this stuff is in place

for ice climbing to become an extreme sport and this was by the 60s and it really started to pick up, I think in the 70s and 80s and definitely by the 90s, it was an established thing. So let's take a little break, shall we? And then we'll come back and kind of drill in a little more to the equipment that you're going to need if you're going to start climbing gate glaciers.

Great. Great. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

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We're here. Right. Jeez, Chuck. Get right to the point already. Right. So we were talking about the tools in these, these axes, which I think they call them sticks sometimes. Oh, oh, I hadn't uncovered that lingo.

Maybe, I might be wrong. They're probably one of the coolest looking things you could buy at an outfitter. Yes. Have you seen them? Oh, sure. I'm a big fan of the Petzl Ergo. Oh, yeah?

Yeah, they're really cool looking. Petzl makes good stuff. Yeah, I got a lot of information from some of Petzl's blogs, I have to say. Yeah, so there are a couple of ways you can go with this. I mean, there are all kinds you can get. They're all sort of variations of the same thing. But when I was reading Debbie saying it,

it was funny because there, you can get one leashed or not leashed, and my first instinct was, why would you ever not want to leash on that thing? Right, right. Because you drop it and it's gone. Yeah, it's a big deal if you drop your ice tool. Yeah, it's not good. But she makes a very good point.

You know, it's not just like, oh, just take the leash off of your wrist. Like you've got on heavy gear and heavy gloves, and it's not easy just to slip that thing off your wrist. So if you want to use, you might have two or three of these for different terrains or whatever or different kinds of ice, and switching them out is a pain. So what I gathered was, if you're a really experienced ice

climber, you probably don't want to leash. No, no. And that's actually becoming much more prevalent called, is it unleashed? Leashless, unleashed. Leashless, unleashed. Axe is unleashed. Right, so that's becoming much more prevalent.

And one of the reasons it is becoming prevalent is because some of the fine makers of ice tools like Petzl, who is not a sponsor of the podcast, by the way, I'm just a fan. Sure. They have started to create ice tools that have real grips on them, that have ridges for where your fingers fit. They're curved in and upward.

And there's something that goes underneath the heel of your hands. The upshot of all this is it's getting tougher and tougher to drop your ice tool. That's right. Even if it is unleashed. But there's still plenty of people who use leashes. And when we say leashes, it's very much like a surfboard

leash, whereas a thing of Velcro that goes around your wrist and there's some unbreakable nylon rope that connects to a carabiner, that connects to your ice tool. So I would go with leashed. I think if you're going to start, you probably are going to have it leashed for a while until you get used to it. Which Petzl did you like?

The Ergo. OK, yeah. It's beautiful. And it looks like there are at least three different ways you can kill someone with this. Yeah, see, so do you see right here where it's curved and at the bottom, this grip right here? Totally.

It looks like a little pistol grip. It is. And it's a really well-made, it's a work of art, Chuck. Let's just call it that. I have a feeling you might just get one of these, just a half. That would be great. Keep it under the bed. No, I'd frame it in a shadow box and just make up

stories about all the glaciers. That's the one, just ding it up a little bit, you know? Right, right. Because, like, Josh, that looks brand new. It's got the price tag on it still. So you were talking about, we were talking about the crampons earlier, and you mentioned briefly the, you know, some of them have a mono point, just the one fang.

Some are dual point. And I, as a newbie, was like, man, I want fangs everywhere. I can get them. But that's not necessarily beneficial, is it? No, and you, well, if you have one fang, you can really dig in deeper, because you're putting all of that force from the kick onto the glacier into that one point, hence the name mono point.

So you can really get in there and get a lot of stability, or a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for, Chuck? A lot of purchase. Okay. Okay? But it's not as stable as the two fanged ones, the two pronged ones, because those have that pressure spread out a little bit, so you have a little more

side to side stability. So you're kind of trading one for the other. I think both work is probably a matter of taste. I think it's probably also a matter of terrain. I think the mono point works better in rocky terrain. And they're a little more flexible too, I think. Yeah, yeah. And you can get heel spurs, not the dreaded foot problem,

but spurs coming off the rear. And again, I'm a multi, give me all the fangs that you can get on my boot. Sure, I'm with you. You know? Just, yeah. I want options. Just like concertino wire wrapped around your feet,

basically. Sure. So you've got the next big thing you need, and this is really basic stuff. If you go online and really start to dig in, outdoor research had some pretty good, like a beginner's guide to ice climbing. There's a guy named Will Gad who's just like,

maybe the premier ice climber in the world, or has been for a while now. He writes a pretty technical blog. So there's a lot of information you can get out there. But if you ever look at a list of the basic necessities you need, it is really, really extensive. I mean, your ice tool and your crampons are just one of many, many things that you need to have

on just a basic ice climb. But another thing that you have to have are what are called ice screws. And if you have ever done any rock climbing, when you're climbing up a rock, especially if it's a well-traveled rock, there's gonna be bolts in place in the rock and you clip on to those things and suspend yourself.

Well, when you're climbing up ice, that ice that you're climbing might not have been there last year, or it's not gonna be there three years from now. So when you're climbing, you have to put in your own bolts. And what they've developed are what are called ice screws that are exactly what they sound like. They're long screws that you can bore into the ice

and then you clip your carabiner to and belay from or at least hang from. This is where it gets terrifying to me because it's ice, you know? Apparently ice can be just as strong as rock, but I've had some ice in my mouth before. Sure. I can chew that with my teeth.

It's true. So it's a little bit unnerving to me to think about screwing into ice and supporting my body weight, which of course I wouldn't be up there like this. That'd be a death sentence. Right. Well, apparently if you ever wanna get as physically fit

as you ever will be in your life, just start ice climbing. Well, we would do it before you start ice climbing probably. Well, yeah, you have to train for it, but I'm saying like, if you're a nice climber, you're about in the peak physical fitness that any human being is. Yes, I would agree with that. So you got your ice screws, you got your crampons,

you got your ax, you've got all kinds of little spawn divots and doohickeys. You've got your super cold weather gear and you gotta have that helmet because ice does chip away and fall and you don't wanna get clunked on the bean when you're hanging off of a sheet of ice. Right, and that's like another big difference between ice climbing and rock climbing

or the overhead hazards are way more prevalent with ice climbing than with rock climbing. I mean, you can still, you know, a rock slide can happen, little rocks can fall off if, you know, you go for a ledge or something when you're rock climbing. Like debris can fall down and it is a problem, but with ice climbing, it's just a matter of fact of the climb, there's going to be ice flying everywhere.

Sometimes way more ice comes off than you intended to, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but there's going to be a lot of ice falling. So you have to have a helmet when you're ice climbing. That's right, you're gonna be doing this. You can do it kind of anywhere in the world where there is ice on a mountain, plenty of places in North America.

You can go to Norway, you can go to Iceland, you can go to the Alps in Europe. Greece kind of surprised me, but I was just being kind of naive and dumb with my geography. Of course, Greece has big mountains with ice and snow. I just, for some reason, was thinking, but they're mountains in Greece?

Yeah, you think of like olives and wine and stuff, you know? And then Mount Olympus, of course. Oh yeah, there's that. It's kind of a famous one. Right, I also saw Scotland actually has some really intense ice climbing. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and there's plenty of places in the United States.

There's actually an ice climbing park called Ure that has an ice climbing competition every year where like the best of the best, and actually from what I understand, everybody comes and competes. Is it fake ice? I mean, not fake, but is it built? It's built. Okay.

It's built, but it's not, like it's built on rocks. Like I think they found a spot in the world where they could kind of grow ice. I'm not exactly sure how they do it. I just saw that it's like human-enabled, basically. Oh, you need a garden hose, right? And cold temperatures. There's some dude in Bermuda shorts and a Panama hat

and like dark socks up to his knees just with his hose. Yeah, just go squirt that down for the next three days. Right, stand there, Walter. There's different kinds of ice, though, and when you're an experienced ice climber, you can look at a face and kind of know what you're getting into before you even come close to it, depending on how it's laying there

and what color it is, how clear it is. I tried to get a read on what would be the ideal ice, and I really couldn't quite suss that out. This is what I saw. So you want ice that has been around for a while, so probably alpine ice, which started out as fallen snow. Not snow that's falling

because that creates different kinds of ice, but there was a big heavy snowfall that dumped on a mountain, and then the temperatures cooled and all of that snow started to turn to ice. And as it did, the air got squeezed out of it by the heaviness of the snow to begin with, but as the ice formed, it should have as well,

and then it bonds to the actual mountain side. So it's real solid to begin with. And then temperatures get around freezing maybe a little above for about five consecutive days. And on that fifth or sixth day of that kind of temperature, the ice should be just perfect for ice climbing because it takes on the state of what's called plastic, where your ice pick just goes right in and it stays in.

And you can just tell it's very satisfying. There's a lot of strength to it, but at the same time, it's not like chipping into a rock. Because like we said, one of the reasons you have to be so fit and you are so fit just by virtue of being an ice climber is you expend a tremendous amount of energy with each swing of your ice tool.

Because if you're working with just plastic ice, that's gonna be a pretty easy, satisfying climb, but that's ideal, that's not the norm. Most of the time when you swing that pick, and again, you're on the side of a glacier, say, you're hanging on by your feet. The fangs on the front of your feet. And you are swigging above your head

and acts that you're hoping to get on the first try, just a really good solid stick. But that's very unlikely. Instead, you might do three, four, five times to get a good stick in there. And each one of those is expending a lot of energy. And you're doing this for meters and meters, depending on how high this ice climb is.

And it requires a tremendous amount of energy. And a lot of it is redundant effort having to swing that pick multiple times just to get that one stick. Yeah, because my, again, my naivete thought, man, I wanna go when it's 30 below zero, because I want that ice to be so frozen. Right, you'd think so.

But the colder it gets, if it's like really, really below freezing, the ice might get brittle, it might break off. And that's called dinner plating. I assume because ice pieces about the size of a dinner plate will come falling off into your face. Yeah, you do not want that, man. No, so like you said, you want temperatures

right at about freezing, even a little bit above freezing is ideal. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, just right around there, not too much above, because then the ice turns into slush and slush doesn't hold you very well. So it's almost like the very first step toward this long path towards slush is where the ideal ice is.

And I saw actually one reason why, maybe even the only reason why that dinner plating happens when it's really cold, when ice becomes less stable, when it's really, really cold, because I thought the same thing. But it's because the colder it gets, the more the ice shrinks. Well, if the ice is attached to the top of a cliff

and the bottom of a cliff, it can't physically shrink very well, right? It doesn't have that shrink. So instead it thins out, it gets tense. So there's a tension in the ice. And when you hit it with your pick, it just shatters. That's why you don't want it to be just ridiculously cold out and have been for a while,

because that ice is far more tense because it's constricting under the cold. That's right. And that alpine ice we were talking about is that really pretty blue ice that you see. If ice is really, really solid and climbable, it'll be blue or blue-green. Sometimes it might have a little yellow to it

because of the minerality to it. Really, really white ice isn't great. Well, I mean, it's not bad. It's got air in it, and it makes it a little bit easier to climb, but it gets a little dicey with the screws. Yeah, and the reason why is because that air that can form when, say, like a waterfall freezes,

and it's essentially a flash freeze, it doesn't happen over a very long period of time. Yeah, people climb those, dude. I've seen pictures. Climbing a frozen waterfall, it's crazy. Yes, it's nuts, but the reason why, and you can see it, it is very opaque. It's very white, and the reason why

is because there's a lot of air trapped in there. Same thing with when it's falling snow that's turning to ice. Not snow that already fell and then turned to ice, but it's turning to ice as it's falling. That traps a lot of air in there, too. And yeah, you can get a pretty good pick stick in there, but it's not going to support you

because it's inherently less dense. It's less solid because there's so much air trapped inside. That's right, and I don't think we mentioned the chandelier ice. It's very pretty. These are icicles that have fused together, but it's not great for climbing. It doesn't hold the screws very well.

And if you're an ice climber, you know your way around all this stuff. You know where to head toward. You're down there at the bottom looking at your route anyway. Which way do I want to go to get the best ice? But you can navigate most of this stuff pretty well, and you know to stay away from, I mean, people still die doing it, of course.

Mistakes and accidents happen, but you know what you're getting into, and you know what kind of ice you're not going to just try and stab into a chandelier. No, but I did see, it's called reading the ice, where you're just standing there basically visually, mentally doing your climb, going through it in your head. And there's plenty of like, you know,

perennial ice sheets that aren't going anywhere for, you know, well for the next couple of decades at least, but they've been there for a really long time, and people climb them, and then once you climb them, you get a good pick stick in there. When you pull your pick back out, that stick is still there. So the people who follow after you,

use the same things, right? It's like a ledge or something in rock climbing, it stays there, so that makes the climbing a lot more easy. Yeah, one of the coolest things about Free Solo was, and this was something I didn't know, I kind of thought like, you go to climb a rock, and you kind of just do your thing,

and what route you think is best, but established places like El Capitan, which is what this one focused on, there are only certain ways you can even climb it, and they're very well-established routes, they're named, and you should see this dude, you're gonna love it. Okay, I'll see you.

It's really good. I will watch it simultaneously when you watch, it's a wonderful life. Okay, but I would suggest, if you don't know anything about the story, you not like Googling into it, just watch it. Okay. Because there's some stress

as to what you think might happen if you don't know the real stories, the real story. I'm trying to dance around it. I like to go in fresh. Okay. So, but what you're saying is, there is a set way, maybe a handful of different ways you can climb El Capitan.

Same thing with these climbs, but depending on whether this is new ice that's not gonna be there at the end of the season, because it's like a frozen waterfall, it's gonna unfreeze and freezes differently every single time, every single year. You may be the first person to make this climb. And so you have to get super inventive,

or it could be one that's been climbed by a bunch of people. And it's a lot easier because you don't have to exert quite as much energy. I saw one climb of the same grade, we'll talk about grades in a second, can take an hour, or I should say, not me, but can take that Will Gadd guy an hour,

but one that's been picked through already, we'll take him like 10 minutes. What fun is that? I would forge my own path. Yeah, I guess so. And you can, you could. Maybe, I don't know. Actually, you should probably just follow the existing path.

All right, should we take another break? Yes, we should. All right, let's do that. And then we'll talk a little bit about technique right after this. All right, let's do this. All right, let's do this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so remember, ice climbing also includes going up very gentle slopes on glaciers at the top of a mountain. Like, basically, when you're watching somebody,

you're like, oh, they're just walking. But it's, there's ice that they're walking on, so it's really hard to walk on. So there's actual techniques that are involved in that level of ice climbing. And the first one is just flat footing, which is, well, you would just basically call it walking, but you're walking with your feet kind of turned out

like a duck going along the ice with, again, with your mountaineering axe to keep yourself from sliding down the mountain if you start to slip. Yeah, and you may, the French technique is what it's also called. You may not even be using your axe at this point, but like you said, it's just sort of like a duck walk. If you look up, you're walking with your,

there's a lot of stress on the inside part of your feet. Right. Which is tough, and if you do this a lot, it's tough on your ankles. You might wanna switch to something called sidestepping. That's exactly what it sounds like, but there's an inherent risk there because you're bringing those boots with those crampons,

which are highly snaggable over each other, and it would be very easy and tricky to snag one foot, and you don't wanna do that. No, and not only that, if you are smart, you were probably using a rope line that you're connected to, to keep you from actually falling off of the mountain. So you're having to step over that as well,

or just step with that connected to the front of your body. Yeah, so it's gotta be extremely difficult to do, but again, it's a lot easier than cutting out like a foothold like they used to do in the old-timey days, like Oscar Eckstein. I wonder people free solo ice, I'm sure they do. Yes, so yes, if you just have crampons and the pickaxes, some people like climbing a waterfall,

there might not be anywhere to put screws in, and you just use that, you use the axes above you and the crampons in front of you, and you just climb up a waterfall. That's a form of ice climbing, I think it's very rare. I think most people are much more safety conscious and stop, put in an ice screw, clip into that, and then move up, and we'll talk a little more

about that in a second, but I think that's the norm, but people do free solo ice climb with just their tools and their crampons. Yeah, and just like free soloing on a rock, that's the subset even of experienced rock climbers, because it's, as they say, one fall does it all. It's kooky, man. Yeah, it's nerve-wracking.

One fall does it all, that's good, thanks. Then we need to talk about the German technique, this is what I would do, and this is where those front fangs come into play, because the Germans got in there and they were like, I don't wanna walk like a duck, I don't wanna sidestep, I don't wanna look goofy. Why don't you just kick into that thing

and climb it like a ladder? Yeah, and I think it's, depending on what type of, what type of technique you're using, it very much depends on the degree or the angle of the terrain. Like you can't front point if there's not enough of an angle in front of you. So by the time you're front pointing,

that thing's at like a 50, 60 degree angle by now. Yes. And then onward to 90 degree plus. Yeah, and I've also saw a lot of pictures of people using two axes. That's all I saw. But that's not always the way though. No, and in fact, Debbie basically describes like

as the basic technique that you're just using one axe, so that you're forming a triangle with your body, with your feet at about shoulder width apart beneath you, and then your axe like in the center above you forming a triangle, which I didn't see anybody. She is right. She knows a lot more than we do about that, but yeah, I didn't see anyone using that.

Everyone was using a technique that she called traction, which is basically what I described. You've got two axes, one just above each shoulder and your feet are shoulder width apart and you're just climbing up one bit at a time, like a human fly. Yeah, I would want two, I want three. I would grow another arm and I would have three axes

in that ice. Right. I would just stay at the lodge. Oh man, little hot cocoa, maybe some whiskey. Whiskey and hot cocoa, I don't know how that would be. Nice fire. Yes. What else?

I think that's it. Maybe, yeah, no, that's it. That's all you need. Kick your feet up. Flannel bodysuit. Yeah, I was going to say really nice like a sweater. Sure. Yeah.

Maybe some meatballs. Sure. This sounds great. Oh, fondue, how about that? There you go, Chuck. I can always go for some fondue. I haven't had that in a while. Have you ever had a reclet?

I don't think so. What is it? Yumi's aunt and uncle got us into it. It's like the 70s thing in the vein of fondue, but it's like this cooktop. And you end up in bed with another woman. It's this cooktop that you cook like vegetables or whatever you want.

Typically, it's like mushrooms or onions or something like that. And then just underneath, there's another heating element and you put hunks of cheese, typically gruyere or I think gruyere usually, and then you melt it and then you put it all together on your plate. So it's this melted, gooey, awesome cheese over like freshly sauteed vegetables.

Interesting. It's really, really good. And it's also fun because you're just sitting there cooking, talking and everything. It's just like a good little social. What's it called? 70s dinner, reclet.

And originally, reclet was a big wheel of cheese pushed close to a fire so that it was kind of melty and you just walk up with hunks of bread and like scoop out hunks of gooey cheese with it. This is like kind of the Milton Bradley version of reclet that I'm talking about. But is the reclet the actual cheese or this unit? Yeah, I think it was originally the cheese,

but now it's both the cheese and the unit. Okay, look at there. Yeah, see what you're talking about. Yeah. I couldn't quite picture it. Right, so yeah, it is kind of tough to describe in my own defense, but it's really cool, it's neat.

So is the idea that the juices drop down into the cheese? No. Or is it, why is it even together then? Just efficiency. Okay. Yeah, you got one unit. All right. I guarantee whoever invented that

never envisioned two dudes in 2020 talking about it, calling it a unit, you know? Yeah. No way. Man, that looks good. Melty cheese on anything. Yeah, it is good. We'll have to have a reclet party sometime.

Fantastic. You're going to love it too. So where were we here? We were talking about reclet. Right, but were we climbing high up an ice waterfall? I think we were talking about the techniques and we both agreed that we would want at least two axes. You said you would grow a third arm for a third axe,

but you're using both feet and both arms in what's called the traction technique. Yeah, traction technique. You're looking to not dinner plate, so you're looking for the strongest ice. If it's convex, that's probably not a good place to throw that axe into. It'll probably shatter and dinner plate.

Right. Although occasionally you might dinner plate and find a very much stronger piece of ice underneath that ice. Yeah, and so Debbie suggests if you are, you know, the best way to prevent dinner plating is to just kind of not use your full force if you can swinging that pick

and maybe kind of testing to see what kind of resistance you get. Also, you want to listen out for sounds too. Hollow sounds are not good. Vibrations in the ice when you swing your tool into it, not good either. I would think not. You don't want to trust that ice.

So you're listening out, you're feeling out. And if it looks like the area is gonna dinner plate or just chip away or fall away or fracture, sometimes it is best to just hit it and get rid of it and then find that better ice underneath if you think the ice is thick enough. Right. And, you know, you are using your arms to be sure,

but like with any kind of climbing sport, most of the work is being done by your legs. Yeah. Yeah, you want most of the weight on your legs for sure. Yeah. You don't want to dangle. No. No, no, no, no, but that does happen.

So, you know, you're talking about one fall does it all. With ice climbing, that is pretty true unless you have like a good repelling system going on and you're clipped into some good ice screws that have a good purchase into the ice. If you fall, you're going to be in big trouble because usually when you fall while you're ice climbing, a lot of ice falls with you.

So even if the impact with the ground doesn't hurt you, something else falling on you might, also don't forget your tools are really, really, they're as sharp as they look. And I was reading about the Ure competition and how I think within the last couple of years, there was some guy who lacerated his arm so badly and kept climbing that they had to shovel out

the bloody snow at the foot of the climb. Yeah, that's unsightly. No one wants to see that. And he wasn't the only one to do that. Like some guy had to go to the hospital after where it might have been the same guy with another lacerations. So the tools are really dangerous.

And that's a really big difference from what I understand between rock climbing and ice climbing. If you rock climb, falling is, it's not great, but it's not unheard of. You might even say it's kind of a common thing to fall during rock climbing. And the chances are you're probably going to survive it with a recoverable injury if you're injured at all.

With ice climbing, it's very infrequent that people fall because when you do fall ice climbing, it's a really big deal. And you can be seriously hurt or killed from that fall. Yeah, and I mean, look at those icicles. Yeah, there was a woman named Sue Nott who was a premier ice climber. She and a woman named Karen McNeil,

another premier ice climber, they were lost. As far as I know, they've never been found. Back in 2006, I'm Mount Foraker in Denali National Park in Alaska. And Mount Foraker has something called the Infinite. Oh, I can't believe I don't remember the name of it. Fang, I think. Man.

And Fang's a pretty good band name. I know, it's a great name for it. But anyway, they were lost on this. It's like one of the hardest, most difficult climbs, ice climbs in the world. And the kind where you have to camp out on the side of a mountain over multiple days and nights to make these climbs.

This is some serious stuff. And these two were perfectly capable of doing it. They just happened to get caught in some bad weather and have never been heard from again. But this is in 2006. And eight years before in a competition, it might've been at Ure, Sue Nott was climbing and she was injured when she fell and some ice speared her.

Wow. So that does happen. Yeah, it does. It's called the Infinite Spur. Yeah, Infinite Spur. Yeah. So they were climbing the Infinite Spur and got lost. In 2006 was a bad year for ice climbing deaths in general.

Not only were Sue Nott and Karen McNeil lost, but a guy named Harry Berger. I think it's probably Hari, but sure. Okay. Well, he was lost in just like a routine training practice. Yeah. That was just a freak accident. And I read about it and they said,

there was no amount of training. There was no amount of preparation. There was no amount of caution that could have saved him. This was just a freak accident that happened, but he was trapped under ice. Like 150 tons of it fell on him while he was climbing it. I mean, this guy was world-class from what I read. So we're Sue Nott and Karen McNeil.

And these are just, this is a really, really dangerous extreme sport. Yeah. I mean, that's the thrill with any extreme sport deep down as you know, you could die that day. You don't want to, but that's part of what makes, you know, that adrenaline kick up to such a level.

Yeah. That these people do those things. It's true. And I mean, you know, you're in the mountains and there's a lot of chance for things like avalanches to happen and ice can fall on you. You can hurt yourself with your tool. You can lose your tool.

You can get caught in a blizzard. The wind can get so bad that it can blow you off the mountain. There's just a lot of things. And there's definitely, you know, precautions you can take. Like if you are an ice climber, you have an avalanche beacon with you. It's just a part of your gear.

You have a first aid kit with you. That's part of your gear too. You know how to use your ice screws and you're clipped in everywhere. There's a lot of precautions you can take, but it is an inherently dangerous sport for sure. Of course. And you always need to remember that you got to get back down

unless you're like being helicoptered out or something which I don't even know if it's a thing. It's probably a thing for the richies. But, you know, you're going down as well and you got to plan out your day so that you're doing that safely and at the right time of day. And, you know, they always say that even hiking downhill

can be tougher on you than hiking uphill. Right. Because you're already worn out at this point and that's when mistakes can happen. So, and we keep saying experience ice climbers. I guess you always have to do something for the first time, but it seems a little redundant to say experienced ice climber, you know?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're definitely doing it for the first multiple times with a very knowledgeable guide who's telling you how to do everything. And you're probably already experienced rock climber. I doubt if you start off with ice climbing.

It would probably be really weird. I wonder if anyone ever has, you know? Like, hmm, never climbed a rock before, but look at that frozen waterfall. But one thing I'm not, I would like to be able to do this. I don't know if I ever will, but one thing that really caught my attention was,

you know, when you're fueling up in the morning before your ice climb, you wanna eat what I saw is like, think the trucker's special breakfast at a diner. I was like, okay. A PBR and eggs and steak. I could get into that kind of sport where that's what you eat.

And they were like, bring food that doesn't freeze. So don't bring bananas, bring Oreo cookies instead. I was like, I really like this ice climbing. Wow. You know, the, it's sadly not there anymore because Atlanta has just really changed in the past 15 years. But there used to be a place called the Austin Avenue Buffet.

I don't know if you ever went there. No. It was a long, long time ago. It's on obviously Austin Avenue, which is not kind of shishy, but this place was a great dumpy dive. And they serve food and they had, in the mornings, they had the Painter Special,

which was eggs, bacon, toast, and a tall boy PBR. No. I thought it was kind of funny. Wow. Yeah. Was the food good? No. Okay.

I'm assuming, I didn't eat. I just drank. I guess. I was in there in the morning for eggs. Painting. Yeah, it was a pretty cool place though. So there was one other thing I wanted to mention too. There's a very controversial side to ice climbing.

The ice climbing community and the rock climbing community are frequently one in the same, but also separate in some ways. And one of the ways they are separate in is that sometimes ice climbers will say, hey, I'm going to practice, but I don't feel like driving up to the mountains. So I'm going to use my tools on a rock climb,

which is called dry tooling. And it has all sorts of negative effects on a rock climbing course. Yeah, I bet. It can chip away ledges and all sorts of stuff. It leaves scars on the rocks. Rock climbers do not like that. So there's kind of like a little bit of a civil war

in the climbing community between rock climbing and people who dry tool climb. And I get the impression dry toolers are not very well liked. Yeah, and so it's kind of dirty too. Dry tool? I think so. Okay, oh, one other thing. Since we're just throwing stuff out at this point,

I ran across a website called jivasankers.com. And it basically is just this blog that makes fun of people's ridiculously dangerous and ill-advised anchors for their climbs. Like, you know, things they're connected into with their carabiners. Oh yeah? And all of that was verbatim the description of the blog,

including all the us. I believe it. You do not. All right, let's end ice climbing once and for all, shall we? Yeah. If you want to know more about ice climbing, there's a lot to go read and then try

and make sure you do it safely, so there you go. And in the meantime, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this gifted and talented. This is great. Hey guys, I'm a gifted and talented GT specialist at an elementary school and my students range from kindergarten to fifth grade. We have an ongoing side project that was inspired by you.

We have two posters where we've created lists of band names and song names. And so when you hear something, they say that'd be a good band name, I write it down. They do the same thing for songs. They also have decided the genre of some of these bands, which is your job. They even took it a step further,

like the GT kids often do, and decided they need to create a synopsis of the songs when they think of one. I'm just picturing kindergartners doing this and it delights me to no end. So here's some of the band names and what genre. Used mirrors, not bad. Okay.

Mr. Ma'am, I love that one. That's a great one. Yeah, she said that's a pop group. Ancient Falls. Okay. That's a prog. Well, she said alternative or maybe jazz, but you are the authority.

Dumb and dangerous. That sounds like an old man band. Okay. And then the loud mouths or just loud mouths, which she said is clearly punk. It is or yeah, punk, post-punk alternative, just punk alternative, loud mouths. Yeah.

She closes with this. Knowing these kids, they will take on one of these band names one day and become the most successful band ever seen. My students are absolutely amazing, so I'm not surprised by anything they do. I enjoy listening while I'm completing all the hours of paperwork I have to do.

Keep up the good work. And big, big shout out to Angie, Connell and Heritage Elementary, gifted and talented kids. That's awesome. Thanks Ms. Connell and your class for writing in those are awesome. What was my favorite Chuck again?

Mr. Ma'am. That's a good one. That is so good. If you want to get in touch with us like Ms. Connell did and her class, you can send us an email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production

of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.