Oregon ice climbers brave slippery slope

BAKER CITY, Ore. – Whit Hartz, Mark Hauter and John Powell climb waterfalls without getting wet.

Well, sometimes they sweat.

But you’d perspire too if you did what they do.

Imagine climbing a 100-foot-high cliff coated in ice.

Imagine further that you remain attached to the ice by, at most, four slivers of metal (but occasionally only one), none much wider than the tip of a flat-bladed screwdriver.

Hartz and Hauter, both from La Grande, and Powell, who lives in Baker City, start climbing when the water stops falling.

The trio ascends only after frigid temperatures have turned a stream of water into a stationary and –they hope – stable sculpture.

But they don’t mind waiting on the weather, in part because they never have to wait on other groups of climbers.

Hartz, Hauter and Powell estimate that fewer than a dozen people, themselves included, regularly climb ice in northeastern Oregon.

“I’ve never seen another climber in this area that I didn’t know,” Hauter said.

Exclusivity aside, Hartz said, ice climbing poses physical and mental challenges that distinguish it from more familiar gravity-defying pursuits such as scaling rock cliffs at Smith Rock in Central Oregon or summiting Mount Hood in the Cascades.

“Unlike rock, which is pretty consistent, ice is always changing, sometimes by the hour,” said Hartz, who’s also a conventional rock and mountain climber.

Plus, ice climbers revel in certain aesthetic advantages.

“The ice itself is just beautiful,” said Hartz, 32, who grew up in Baker Valley and graduated from Powder Valley High School.

Hauter, 42, said he took up the sport in northeastern Oregon in 1982. He introduced Hartz to ice climbing about four years ago.

Hauter said he basically taught himself to climb.

Hauter said Dave Coughlin, a Baker City attorney and triathlete, was one of the few ice climbers in northeastern Oregon at the time.

“I just decided that I wanted to do it, so I did it,” Hauter said.

He said he first felt the lure of steep ice when he skied in the backcountry.

“One thing led to another and pretty soon I wanted to climb those steep faces,” Hauter said.

He said he searched for suitable routes during his ski trips. And he perused topographical maps which show the steepness of slopes “looking for cliffs.”

He found plenty.

And almost a quarter century later, he’s still looking.

“The adventure – that’s a big part of it,” Hauter said. “The challenge. And just the beauty. It takes you to some pretty wild places that you couldn’t get to any other way.”

Powell, 51, who said he has been climbing mountains “for most of my life,” first scaled sheer ice back in the 1970s in the Columbia River Gorge.

Powell refers to frozen cliffs as “icicles” – an amusingly diminutive term, as many of the routes that he, Hauter and Hartz climb actually extend for hundreds of feet.

Of course no climber, whether on ice or rock, wants to fall, even when he or she knows a stout rope should interrupt the plunge and prevent disaster.

But gravity is not the ice climber’s only foe.

Taking even a brief tumble while climbing an ice cliff can be roughly akin to blindly thrusting your hand into the kitchen knife drawer.

Climbers carry an ice pick in each fist and wear crampons with 10 or 12 metal spikes per boot. These honed metal points anchor a climber to the ice, but they can also slice or skewer a falling climber who is flailing at the end of a safety rope.

A wayward ice pick or crampon might sever a climber’s rope.

The skills a climber needs to reach the top are similar whether clinging to rock or ice, Hartz said.

Ice climbers reach up the cliff, first with one pick then the other, and swing the tool, hammer-like, to drive the tip into the ice.

Once the climber is confident that the tip has a solid bite, Hartz said, he or she pulls up and then kicks each boot into the ice.

Generally, a climber strives to maintain at least three solid holds at a time – both picks and one boot, or both boots and one pick.

It’s possible and sometimes necessary to hang from the ice by a single pick, Hartz said.

In essence each climb consists of a series of one-armed pull-ups. Some climbs are several hundred feet high, which explains why Hartz’s biceps bulge more prominently than most people’s.

“Climbing makes your forearms and your calves burn,” he said.

“This year was exceptional for ice, but none of it’s easy to get to,” Powell said.

This year also was exceptional for snow, which means those pre-climb journeys, known as approaches, have been long and arduous, Hartz said.

“Sometimes it’s a half-day endeavor to get there,” he said.

The quality of the climbs, though, tends to offset the exertion, he said.

Powell recommends, as do Hartz and Hauter, that people interested in ice climbing get acquainted with an experienced climber.

“I’m always willing to take someone up,” Hartz said.

Just remember to pack plenty of clothes.

“It can,” Hartz said, “get pretty miserably cold.”