Saturday, April 11, 2009

Ice Climbing at Fox Creek

Carlene, Celine, Scott and I visited the tripod down in Nenana on the way south.

Then we drove farther and got to Fox Creek where we would set up ropes and do some ice climbing. This was my first time out since last April, and first time trying out some new second-hand gear. We had to hike a little ways to get to a good vertical climb. This made for an interesting descent at night to the point where we had to repel down one of the ice-hills we got up without a problem earlier in the day.
Below Carlene sets up ropes on our icefall. Her and I have been planning on ice climbing together since July - I am glad it finally happened before the icefalls are all gone for the summer!
Below is Scott showing us how it's done - under the bluest skies!
Celine kicks up some ice below. We shredded this thing in spots by the end.. there is a reason you wear a helmet when you are climbing!! By the end of our day the icefall was obtaining waterfall-like qualities to the point where the one line made us look like we were peeing, ha ha. We were all pretty water-logged by the end.
You got me down there, right??? Talk about learning to trust people.. and gear. This is one way to do it!
Scott coming down from the top...

Phew, that was a challenging day!

1 comment:

AP said...

Whoa, I don't know why I thought the tripod was small, but that thing is HUGE!!