Gadd stands at the base of the 40-foot-high frozen waterfall and looks up. He kicks footholds with his crampons and swings his axes overhead, driving the points deep into the ice. He pulls with his arms and pushes with his legs, then kicks his feet and swings the axes again. Within minutes he’s 20 feet above the ground and headed higher, without ropes or other protection in case his toes slip or the ice crumbles.

I wasn’t sure what I’d get out of a weekend of ice climbing just with girls, because I’ve always climbed with boys. Of course I’d come away with sore shoulders, bigger calves and more mad girl-climbing skills, but what else would be on the table at a women’s weekend? After an insanely fun weekend in Ouray at the Chicks With Picks Betty Ice Ball, I compiled a list of five things you’ll get more of when you climb with Chicks:

More Potty Talk: A lot can go wrong when you have to pee with a funnel. (I won’t go into it here, but trust me — things can go really wrong.) Consequently, stories about pee funnels abound when you climb with women. After one of the dinners at the Ice Ball, a veteran Chick recounted a pee funnel story from her climb of Denali: The tube of her beloved Freshette landed in the “toilet” at a high camp, sending her into total panic. How would she do the deed in a rope team with men now? A friend sent her to see the only other woman on the mountain, who, though she boasted about only using a hardware-store funnel herself rather than those fancy pee funnels, had a spare Freshette. The woman turned out to be Dawn Glanc, who served as a guide for this year’s Betty Ball (and won the Ouray Ice Fest comp in Januray).

More Nudity: If you’re not afraid to bare your ass to the wind and other climbers in the Ice Park (assuming you’re not using the aforementioned Freshette), you’re probably not afraid to do it back at the Vic in the relative privacy of your room. Maybe my roommate and I were just exhibitionists, but when you’re queuing to get in the shower next so you don’t stink at dinner, you start peeling off baselayers. If other women came in the room to download the day of climbing while you’re toweling off, well, no time for modesty when you’re hungry enough to gnaw on your backpack. There’s nothing titillating about this, no grab-fanny going on here. That happens while we’re out climbing, fully dressed.

More Love: When you totally rock some climb, dude — and you will at Chicks, because you’ll have some of the best guides around, regardless of gender — expect high fives, fist bumps, puffy belay-jacket hugs and cheers. When a guide throws a contest into the clinic, like making it up in the fewest swings, expect stiff competition from your pals…and those puffy hugs in the end, because your competitors have grace. The love-fest won’t go unnoticed. Nearby climbers seem a little jealous (could just be that you’re climbing with Kitty Calhoun), and one commented with a smile that we were having way too much fun.

More Mascara: I’ve never climbed in makeup. Probably because I almost never wear makeup. But for some reason, I spotted a lot of Chicks wearing mascara while ice climbing. I didn’t look further into this trend, but I’m assuming it’s waterproof. How could it not be waterproof, right? Ice melts after it nicks your face. A few Chicks wore lip gloss, too, and I had to wonder how that doesn’t end up on your glove when you wipe your nose with the back of your hand. I don’t really get it, but it does look nice — much nicer than the layers of snot accumulating on my gloves. Perhaps I could learn something from the glam climbers.

More Climbing: The Chicks guides keep you moving. You start at 7:45 and climb until 4 p.m. You have 30 minutes to scarf lunch and move to your next clinic. When you get there, be prepared to work. Even when the guides don’t seem to be pushing you, they are. Sarah Hueniken, the guide for my mixed clinic, kept sending us further and further up routes by simply saying, “Do one more move.” This was the last clinic of the weekend, and I was wasted, but as soon as someone untied, she’d get me to keep going with a mere, “You’re up, Jenn,” and a smile. On the last climb, a tall M7, she summoned me to the rope and said, “Well someone needs to go get the quickdraws.” Indeed.

Jenn Fields is a writer and editor from Longmont, Colorado. She has written for Bicycling, Mountain Bike, Backpacker, Climbing and the Boulder Daily Camera. Her personal web site is http://www.jennfields.com. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Chicks with Picks just celebrated its tenth anniversary of teaching women of all abilities how to ice climb and improve current skills. More info can be found at http://www.chickswithpicks.net/.

I attended the Mt. Washington Valley Ice Festival numerous times and had a blast. The ice climbing there was fantastic, with opportunities for superb multi-pitch routes, mixed climbs, and even top-roping.

When I moved to southwest Virginia to be closer to the New River Gorge, the one thing I missed was the availability of ice climbing in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Hampshire. It has now been years since I’ve climbed ice.

Now that I’m in Colorado I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming ice season, though I think I’ll need to upgrade most of my gear (I hope my wife is not reading this!)

As a preview to the upcoming season, Splitter Choss has a post up on the status of some of the Colorado ice climbing areas including Crested Butte, Ouray, and Rocky Mountain National Park.

If you’re looking forward to ice climbing this year, there are several resources to update you on the winter climbing conditions. Mountain Project has conditions reports that can be tailored to areas you choose. NEice.com provides conditions via a user forum for most of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Eastern Canada. For both US and international climbing area conditions, the American Alpine Institute blog provides a weekly post on updated conditions. For Colorado specific conditions, you can check iceclimbingcolorado.com‘s current condition reports. Finally, Chauvin Guides provides a detailed look at conditions in New Hampshire with pictures and descriptions.

A higher quality MOV video can also be found at National Geographic.

January 4 – 6, 2008
Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival
The 8th annual Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival will be held in the Bernese Oberland. Over 450 ice climbers are expected to attend this festival in Switzerland.

January 9 – 13, 2008
Ouray Ice Festival
The 13th annual Ouray Ice Festival will be held in the Ouray Ice Park in Colorado.

January 11 – 13, 2008
Adirondack International Mountainfest
The Mountaineer and Adirondack Rock and River have teamed up to host the 12th annual Adirondack International Mountainfest in Keene Valley, New York.

February 1 – 3, 2008
Michigan Ice Fest
This is the 25th year of the Michigan Ice Fest located on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

February 7 – 10, 2008
Mount Washington Valley Ice Festival
One of the premier climbing events in the country, the 2008 ice festival will be the 15th annual running of the event. This year they even have an Ice Fest 2008 blog. I’ve been to this one twice and it was great.

February 15 – 18, 2008
South Fork Waterfall Ice Festival
The 10th annual South Fork Waterfall Ice Festival bills itself as the “Friendliest Little Ice Festival in the Northern Rockies” and will be held in Cody, Wyoming.

February 16 – 17, 2008
Smuggler’s Notch Ice Bash
I’m not sure how long this festival has been running, but the Smuggler’s Notch Ice Bash will be centered out of the Sunrise Cafe in Jeffersonville, Vermont.

If there are any upcoming ice festivals I missed, please leave a comment below.

A full schedule of classes include beginning through advanced ice climbing, snowshoe mountaineering, and avalanche fundamentals.

Recent customer experience has shown that the front points of SARKEN crampons are susceptible to premature wearout following heavy use. This means cracking of the metal forefoot near the front point(s), followed by possible breakage if usage continues.

Petzl has stopped sales and production of these crampons and is recalling all SARKEN crampon models because we feel that the potential lifetime of the crampons should be longer than user experience has demonstrated.

If you own these crampons, Petzl has instructions on their website.

It’s really not that hard to figure out which areas at the New to explore to find possible ice climbing though. If you climb there enough, you’re quite familiar with the various small waterfalls and areas that stay perpetually wet from drippage. All make excellent potential ice climbing areas.

I saw an article in the Charleston Gazette with some great pictures of the ice climbing this past season at the New.

This February provided a string of subzero mornings followed by afternoons in which temperatures failed to venture above the freezing point, making small watercourses plunging into the New River Gorge and the cliffs surrounding nearby Summersville Lake solid enough to climb.

Ah, next year I’ll unpack my ice tools, screws, and crampons…

Technorati Tags: climbing, ice climbing, west virginia

The 2005 Canmore Ice Climbing Festival will be held this year on March 3-6. Sponsored by Arc’teryx, the Canmore festival will have competitions, skills clinics, a slideshow and auction, and gear demos.

For the past five years, University of Northern Iowa outdoor pursuits teacher Don Briggs has been icing down four silos for the purpose of climbing. The largest ice wall stretches 68 feet from the ground, while two others top out at 55 feet.

Will Gadd will be attending as an event host and will also be conducting demos.

An excerpt from the author, Will McCarthy:

Ice is weird stuff, though climbing it might just be weirder. Ice-climbing is also potentially painful: half the equipment has sharp metal points (like tools, crampons, and ice-screws) that mix well with neither the other half of the equipment (like clothes, pack, and rope), nor with the soft flesh of a climber. And then there’s the objective danger. Ice-climbs are temporary features of winter, and are in a perpetual state of falling down during their short life-spans. That’s the part of ice-climbing that’s potentially lethal. The paradox of ice-climbs is that they can provide the easiest and safest means of ascent of a cliff, or a mountain. The trick is to determine when an ice-climb is safe, and to do that requires knowing all about ice.