Getting A Grip On Ice-Climbing Premier Climber Jeff Lowe Authors Definitive Book About Very Specialized Sport

The ice dancer moves across a frozen stage, a colorful motion against shades of whites and yellows.

It’s a puzzle of fragile pillars and crumbling handholds; chandeliered, overhanging terrain; and cauliflower mounds topping off sections that end far below in jagged icy teeth.

Jeff Lowe is one of a small band of ice climbers who revel in cold winters that will freeze waterfalls into fantastic shapes.

“The sense of frozen motion is impressive,” Lowe said. “The idea of climbing inside something like that is attractive.”

“You might have a belay in a cave with stalactites hanging down from the top; the light shining through them can be incredibly beautiful. It’s like climbing inside a crystal.”

Lowe shares those experiences in his new book “Ice World” (Mountaineers-Books, $29.95).

The Colorado resident looks at the history of ice climbing, his experiences on ice, the sport’s clothing and gear, and the basics of ice climbing.

The foreword to the book was written by Spokane climber John Roskelley, who joined Lowe to climb a difficult peak near Mount Everest called Tawoache. Both climbers consider the expedition one of the highlights of their careers.

“To be on the really ethereal waterfalls with equal parts hanging icicles and air and frozen snow stuck in the ice, it’s a whole different world,” Lowe says.

“Of course, you have a sense of insecurity that stays with you the whole time.”

A climber can be confident and still have fear.

“Fear is there to keep us alive. It’s a genetically programmed response to dangerous situations,” Lowe says.

“You have to work with the fear and not let it cause you to make a hasty response. Fear and adrenaline can cause you to make a dangerous move.”

Lowe says he’s not an adrenaline junkie, and his experience keeps him out of most dangerous situations.

“I like to feather the edge but keep on the side of control.”

Sometimes danger finds even a cautious climber. A few years ago Lowe was camping by himself in Nepal when he was buried by an avalanche. He woke up to the crushing weight of 6 feet of snow.

“I thought for about two seconds that it might be easier to go back to sleep. Then I thought about my daughter and thought, ‘That’s not acceptable. Get busy.’

“I was barely able to move enough to start digging. It took several hours in the middle of a storm in the middle of the night.”

The physical aspect of scaling waterfalls is similar to rock climbing, Lowe says, including the rush of feelings when maneuvering from one position of balance to another.

“It’s like doing a series of strengthening and stretching exercises but with a purpose. No movement is exactly the same as the previous one. It’s a never-ending response to the terrain.”

The biggest difference between ice and rock climbing is that ice conditions are variable from one week to another, Lowe says.

“You learn to assess conditions more so than a rock climber.”

The ice climber’s tools change the dynamics between the climber and the medium.

“Some people are good tool users; the tools are extensions of their bodies. Others are not so good at that but very good at manipulating with their bodies alone.

“Some are better suited to rock, some to ice.”

For both styles, there’s the freedom of movement.

“It’s the exhilaration, that sense of freedom of moving in these vertical realms. In a way, you feel like you shouldn’t be there but you’ve adapted yourself to the terrain.”

Today’s ice climbers are helped by a late-1960s revolution in ice ax design.

Climbers were using picks whose points were straight out from the shaft. Then climbers designed curved picks that changed everything.

In the United States, it was a curved pick head that allowed the ice ax to stick and hook when it was pulled up. In Scotland, it was a drooped pick that did the same thing when pulled down.

“The hooking action made steep waterfall ice climbing possible,” Lowe says. “It was a watershed innovation.”

Lowe says ice climbers need to be fairly calm personalities.

“Ice is a little more foreign medium, it feels more bizarre so that ability to be calm is important. … It takes somebody who has the ability to really read the ice and understand how the tools and the ice interface.

“You need to really know intuitively and intellectually what’s going on when you swing your tool and try to get it to stick it in the ice.

“It’s like reading a river.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: In search of a tall, cold one If the weather is cold, Washington residents don’t have to go far to climb ice. But that’s a big “if.” Despite the meteorological handicaps, Washington climbers can expect a few weeks of climbing at Mount Baker Ski Area, Icicle Canyon near Leavenworth, Banks Lake by Coulee City, Entiat River Road north of Chelan, Narada Falls in Mount Rainier National Park, and Franklin Falls at Snoqualmie Pass. In the Idaho Panhandle, Copper Falls near Bonners Ferry and Chilco Falls off Highway 95 provie some climbing. In a good cold snap, ice climbers can get practice on the creek near Indian Canyon Golf Course. Part of the attraction for waterfall climbers is the ever-changing nature of ice and the lack of crowds. Banff, Jasper and Yoho national parks in Canada are considered the region’s mecca, because the winters are longer and more consistent.