When rock climbing becomes passe

By PHILIPPA JONES

Walking across hard snow and ice with crampons strapped on to your boots is a great feeling. Each crunching footstep feels positive and getting a good purchase on sloping ground, either going up or down, is a liberating sensation.

Get to the base of vertical ice, however, and the rules change. If you're going up all you'll be relying on is four skimpy points of contact: the sharp blades of the ice tools and the two fang-like points protruding from the front of each crampon.

Each move upwards entails taking out one of these already tenuous links to a (you hope) solid structure, reducing you to three points of contact. "Thwack" goes the pick of the ice axe into the ice above your head as you embed it in the ice with a solid swing and a deft flick of the wrist. You're secure again.

An ice tool biting securely into ice makes a singular sound that an ice climber learns and knows: thunk. A successful placement is also a feeling, a vibration that travels through the handle of the ice axe down through your hands and arms.

Likewise your feet. By swinging from your knee, you make the blade's sharp points sink like fangs into the ice so the rigid sole becomes a secure platform to hold your weight on your feet.

That is, if all goes well. Even if you're fit, and certainly you must have strong calves and forearms, there's technique to master and dangers such as falling ice and loose rock to cope with.

Once the points have bitten you must keep your foot still lest the points dislodge, and until practice makes perfect, wiggling the ice tools up and down to dislodge them is a nerve-wracking procedure. That thunk you listened for can instead be the scary tinkle of shards of ice breaking off. Even worse is brittle ice, layered by freeze and thaw cycles, that can shatter or fall off in dinnerplate-size slabs when struck by the ice tool.

Combine all this with beginner's fear, which has you gripping the shaft of each tool like a vice, and you have a most challenging pastime - when conditions allow.

"Curtains of ice happen when water runs down and freezes as it flows," says Graham Charles, an accomplished climber and paddler. "These tentacles of water ice can be as thick as the trunk of a tree and good for climbing.

"They can be brittle, sure, and in New Zealand it's quite likely, given our heating/cooling regime. The temperatures don't stay super-cold for very long like in Canada and France, where ice climbing has a huge following."

Ice climbing may not be huge in New Zealand but it has keen proponents who go to great lengths to get to remote places such as Wye Creek up the back of the Remarkables in Queenstown. It's south facing and Charles describes it as a deep dark gully - it gets no sun whatsoever in winter. But it's where you see exquisite chandelier ice.

In the North Island Mt Ruapehu has places where ice fit to climb can be pretty well relied on in the dead of winter - even in a bad snow year.

Charles, a former instructor at the Outdoor Pursuits Centre "just across the road" on the edge of Tongariro National Park, says that many a time, if he could be out of bed by 4.30am, he could drive up to Whakapapa, hotfoot it up to the top of the second chairlift and head out to the Pinnacles, solo an ice route and be back in time for the first meeting of the day.

He's accomplished enough to climb alone and without a rope on familiar ground. His steady rhythm - kick-jab-kick-jab - and total concentration soon has him pulling over the lip at the top.

Some of the skills of rockclimbing translate well to ice climbing. For both, balance and flowing movement are vital. In both, learning to efficiently conserve energy by keeping your weight on your feet, rather than dangling from you arms, is also vital.

And you need a head for heights and nerves of steel, of course.

But though the angle, the steepness, may be similar, ice is very different from a rockface. Ice climbers describe the different kinds of ice: the plasticity of snow ice, which is mature, consolidated snow; brittle water ice formed by dripping water; white ice, rime ice, blue, green, grey, or even black ice. And then there are the spectacular frozen waterfalls, with their chandelier-like formations.

A beginner, however, will surely start out with an experienced partner or guide on a low-angle slope - and a rope.

Mt Ruapehu's Tukino has climbable ice on its lower slopes and its south-facing position is favourable, but the Pinnacles have routes with evocative names such as Gorilla, Tequila Sunrise and the mega-classic Chiming Bells.

Although short, they're worthy objectives in their own right, because they take you to the top. Once you've climbed the ice it's a short scramble to the upper snowfield and you're there - with Tongariro National Park laid out at your feet, the peaks of Ruapehu across the way and, if the weather's clear, a view of Mt Taranaki towards the west.

Outdoor Pursuits Centre

Case notes

What you need

Stiff boots fitted with crampons, two ice tools, a helmet, a harness and a good pair of alpine gloves.

The Outdoor Pursuits Centre offers ice-climbing tuition. Ph: (07) 386 5511

The New Zealand Alpine Club sometimes runs courses that include ice-climbing instruction.
Email: arwenv@hotmail.com