Before going ice climbing, it’s important to know the risks of what you’re getting into. I’ve written the following guide to highlight some of the main risks of ice climbing.
So, is ice climbing dangerous? Yes, ice climbing is a dangerous sport for a variety of factors. The cold temperatures, risk of falling ice, and physical injuries that occur during lead falls are some of the reasons ice climbing is so hazardous.
When discussing ice climbing risk, there are two main categories to be aware of: human risks and natural hazard risks. Natural hazard risks involve things like the cold, icefall, and avalanche danger. Human risks are the risks that arise from lapses in human judgement, which can happen quite often in ice climbing. These risks can be mitigated and managed, but they can never be fully controlled.
Ice Climbing Risks
First, let’s take a look at some of the main risks that ice climbing presents and see what makes them so dangerous. As I said, this can be broken down into two main categories.
Natural Hazards
Natural hazards are the ones caused by the environment around you. Ice climbing is a remote sport that involves trekking to some pretty far-away places to find good lines. While this is what gives the sport a fair chunk of its appeal, it’s also the reason for several of the hazards.
Natural hazards are tricky because they can’t really be controlled. All you can do is mitigate these risks — e.g., only climb a route if you feel that the natural hazards for that particular route are low. For example, you can’t do anything to lower the chances of an avalanche occurring on a route you’re climbing; all you can do is make yourself aware of those risks and make a judgement call as to whether or not you want to go climbing.
Because of this, it’s important that someone in your group has enough outdoor experience to judge the situation and make these decisions. A lot of the time, there’s no clear yes-or-no answer to tell you whether or not you should go climbing, so I can’t tell you climb under these conditions, but don’t climb under those conditions. There’s often a large grey zone, and someone has to have the knowledge to analyze it.
So, what are some of the specific natural hazards you’ll need to deal with?
Cold Weather
Cold weather is perhaps the most unavoidable danger that you’ll need to contend with while ice climbing. Without the cold, you won’t be able to go. The warmest it’s ever going to be while you’re climbing is probably right around freezing, and that will be on a really good day.
So, because you can’t really mitigate this risk — that is, only go ice climbing on days that are warm — you need to find a good way to control for it. There are a few things you can do to manage the cold:
- Eat enough food: Having calories in your belly is the best possible way to ensure that you’re able to keep yourself warm. I’m not a breakfast person, but I always make sure I have a healthy snack before I head out for a day of ice climbing, and I make sure to eat throughout the day
- Go to the bathroom: This is a little less well-known, but it’s a useful strategy that should be mentioned. When you have liquid in your bladder, your body needs to expend energy keeping it warm, so it doesn’t freeze. Emptying your bladder means that your body can use this energy on other areas (like your fingers and toes).
- Layer: A good layering system is essential for warding off the cold. You need to have the right amount of clothing to keep you warm when you’re standing still, but not enough to make you sweat when you’re moving. Check out my guide for layering here.
The cold obviously has risks associated with hypothermia and frostbite. Those are pretty extreme injuries, though, and just because you’ve avoided them doesn’t mean that the cold isn’t dangerous.
Cold can influence you in other ways, like making it harder to focus and forcing you into bad decisions. When you’re half frozen and in pain, it can mess up your mental state, which heightens the risk of making any of the human-caused errors. Furthermore, when your muscles stop working due to the cold, it’s easier to make a mistake when climbing/belaying.
Ice/Rock Fall
Ice or rocks coming down from above you are always a risk that you need to be aware of, whether you’re climbing or belaying. This risk is especially notable on warmer days, or later I the day once the sun has had a chance to heat up ice.
Water will work its way into the cracks between rocks, causing stress points and fractures. When that same water undergoes a freeze/thaw cycle, it can expand and contract multiple times, weakening the rock around it and causing sizeable chunks to come loose. Similarly, when ice warms up, it’s more likely to accentuate any pre-existing weaknesses, causing the ice to shear and fall down.
These projectiles can come from far above you on the route, to the point where you might not even be able to see the point that they originate from. That makes it harder to mitigate the risk.
The number one thing you can do is to make sure that you’re always wearing your helmet. I know some people take this rule leniently when they’re rock climbing, but you need to always make sure to have it when you’re on ice.
Aside from this, research and staying aware are really the only two other things you can do to prevent this. Researching the route either via websites or guidebooks can warn you if there’s increased risk of rock or icefall coming from above. By staying alert, you’re ensuring that you’ll have at least a few seconds to react if something comes towards you.
Ice Quality
When ice climbing, all of your protection — that is, the pieces of gear that catch you when you fall — are placed in the ice. If the ice fails, you’re going to fall farther than you originally expected. Because of that, the quality of the ice is paramount to your safety.
The risk associated with ice quality is heightened if you need to build your anchors in the ice. If you’re top roping or multi pitching with an ice anchor, you need to be cognizant of the fact that your entire life is relying on the piece of ice that you’re on.
You should be paying attention to the size, quality, and warmth of the ice that you’re climbing. In terms of size, the ice needs to be thick enough to support your weight (and any dynamic force caused by a fall). Pay special attention to the place where the ice joins the rock, because this is where weaknesses often occur.
Quality of the ice refers to how much damage has been done to it both by other ice climbers and a consistent freeze-thaw cycle. Poorly formed ice is full of air bubbles, which means that there’s less material to grip when you place an ice screw.
Finally, there’s the temperature of the ice. Warm ice is softer and more likely to break. Pay attention to the ice throughout the day, especially on sunny days.
To see an example of what happens when the ice quality is lower than it should be, check out this video of a climber nearly being crushed when his pillar detaches from the wall it was secured to:
Notice how the ice breaks right at the point where it connects to the rock. This highlights both how important ice quality is and how difficult it can be to judge (both of the men in this video are expert ice climbers, and they still almost died because of this).
Avalanche Danger
Finally, there’s the avalanche danger that you need to be concerned with. This is more of a risk on alpine ice routes, although it’s something that you should still be aware of when you’re cragging.
The thing with ice is that, before it can freeze, it needs to be running water. Water always finds the lowest point of resistance to run through, which means that waterfalls will form in valleys, gulley’s, and natural choke points on mountains.
Unfortunately, avalanches tend to follow the same rules of gravity that water does. When a large section of snow comes loose, physics will determine that that mass of snow find the path of least resistance to the ground, often taking it through those same valleys and chutes that the waterfalls have carved out. That’s very, very bad news for anyone who happens to be ice climbing on that waterfall.
These accidents happen suddenly, have dire consequences, and are often almost impossible to predict. Recently, world-class alpinists David Lama, Jesse Roskelley, and Hansjorhg Auer died on Howse Peak in Alberta when an avalanche came loose thousands of feet above them and completely wiped out the route they were climbing on.
Some people choose to mitigate this risk by carrying avalanche gear with them on alpine routes, while others deem that to be too much weight to carry while on challenging terrain.
Even if you don’t pack your shovel and beacon, you should make sure to read avalanche reports for the area you’ll be climbing in. If the risk is high, consider calling off your climb for the day and instead spend the day cragging on some low-risk ice.
Human Risks
Now that the natural risks are all covered, it’s time to talk about the dangers caused by human behaviour.
Believe it or not, about 95% of climbing accidents come from human mistakes. Especially in the ice climbing world, where the stakes are high and consequences can really be fatal, good decision making is essential.
This is a point that gets hammered on a lot within the ice climbing community, but it’s worth repeating: ice climbing is not rock climbing. The sport is more difficult, and the risks are higher.
I say this because a lot of people transition from rock climbing to ice climbing as they begin looking for new sports. That’s fine, but there needs to be a mental shift when you swap your shoes and chalk for picks and crampons. Rock climbing is a fun, adventurous sport where you can push the limits, chuck crazy dynos, and take 30-foot whippers, all while being perfectly safe. Ice climbing isn’t like that at all.
The decision making criteria for ice climbing is fairly straightforward: if you don’t think you’ll be able to safely climb a route without falling, don’t do it. If you’re unsure about the danger, or not positive that the ice will hold, find something else to climb.
In terms of human errors, there are three main things to be concerned about.
Fall Danger
Fall danger is where the largest difference between ice climbing and rock climbing lies.
When ice climbing, you cannot fall on lead. I’ve written two different articles about it here and here, because it’s such an important point.
The issue with ice climbing lead falls are that you don’t fall as cleanly as you do in rock climbing. Because of the tools you’re using, it’s almost guaranteed that something— be it an ice pick or a crampon— is going to get stuck in the ice as you fall. This places a lot of unnatural pressure on your legs or arms, leading to torn ligaments and broken bones.
Furthermore, it can mess up your balance, which makes it more likely that you’ll get tangled up in your rope or take a nasty swing into the wall.
Because of this, you need to be extra careful about what routes you climb, because you need to be positive that you can make it to the top safely. Pushing your limits in ice climbing is far different than rock climbing.
Belayer risk
Even when you’re not on the ice, there’s risks associated with ice climbing. These can be broken down into two main categories:
- Icefall risk: It’s very common for the climber to pull loose chunks of ice from the rock that are then sent flying down towards the belayer. You need to always be aware of this danger and doing everything you can to mitigate it. Mostly, this involves keeping a heads up when your climber is on route. You should also pick your belay spot so that, right off the bat, you’re lowering the chance that any ice comes your way.
- Fall risk: If your climber falls while they’re low enough, you need to be careful about the direction they’re coming down. They’ve got sharp spikes in their feet and hands, and the last thing you want is to get impaled.
Decision Making
Finally, we arrive at decision making.
Decision making is maybe the single most critical risk factor in ice climbing. Every one of the above dangers can be mitigated by good decision making, and almost every single accident can be traced back to a series of bad decisions.
Your decision-making skills are something that you need to hone over a period of time. You won’t learn them by reading articles or watching videos; you need to get out into the wilds with people who are more experienced than you are and watch how they approach dangerous situations. Only by doing that are you going to hone the skills you need to properly be able to analyze a situation.
Another way to make sure you’re watching your own back is to spend some time learning about cognitive biases. These are essential lapses in your brains critical thinking ability that cause you to make bad decisions. Some examples of these include:
- Recency bias: When your brain judged more recent information to be more relevant. ‘My friend climbed this route yesterday and the ice held, so it must be solid’.
- Cognitive dissonance: When your brain does not match your beliefs to your actions. Climbing a route that you know is too difficult for you to climb safely would be a good example.
- Confirmation bias: When you only see the information that agrees with your assessment, and none of the contradictory information. “The route looks good from at the bottom,” the climber said, ignoring the fact that online reports warned of unseen avalanche danger. “And the snow walking in felt solid, so I think we’ll go for it.”
- The Dunning-Kruger Effect: When people who are unskilled at something believe they know more than they do. This is the classic ‘not knowing what you don’t know’. An example would be not being scared of falling because you don’t know how damaging ice climbing falls can be.
Being aware of biases can help you recognize and mitigate them in real time, which can do wonders for your safety and decision making ability.