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kpinwalla2
Social climber
WA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 1, 2017 - 10:38am PT
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Motivated by old ice climbing texts and Chouinard's new book "Climbing Ice" my buddies and I at Tates Creek High School decided we had to take advantage of the much colder than normal winters we were having and track down some frozen waterfalls. We concentrated our search on the KY River palisades just south of Lexington, and at the Red River Gorge. The waterfalls at the gorge tend to be free-falling, building huge ice stalagmites that rarely connect to the cliff above, and although we climbed many of them, getting a cold shower in the process, we found more ice than we could possibly climb along the stair-stepped limestone cliffs of the KY river. We started with what we had - flexible leather boots, flexible SMC crampons and a weird mix of tools that included a Chouinard alpine hammer and an 85 cm SMC axe. We eventually acquired better tools, boots, and crampons - and things got a bit easier by the time I was enrolled at the University of Kentucky. I was the chief ice explorer, but our bold leader was Ed Pearsall who later moved away to CO Springs to be closer to the mtns. I came across these photos and thought it would be best to post them so there was some record of all this youthful adventure.
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mike m
Trad climber
black hills
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Wow that is great.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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So do you get to sip moonshine when you need to warm up?
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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Great stuff!!!! Unlikely to get ice like that down in KY these days--often not forming or lasting long even in parts of New England.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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Love it! I wonder if anyone climbs ice in KY these days? Or does ice only form in unusually cold winters?
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona
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Cool! Those were some cold winters, I remember them well from waiting for school buses in OH.
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kpinwalla2
Social climber
WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 1, 2017 - 01:10pm PT
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Matt - that looks like the one that Ed kicked off as he was climbing it. Glad to see there's still some ice showing up now and then...
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Two years now of garbage ice here in New England! Keep these pictures coming!
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Ice was pretty darn good right up until last week... :( really sucks dog snot now......
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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The Best! Bamboozler Shaft Chouinard Axes and leather boots!!
I can smell those wet Dachsteins from here.
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kpinwalla2
Social climber
WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 2, 2017 - 11:48am PT
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Nice shot Matt - something tells me you probably weren't thinking "I'll bet there's some old geezers somewhere that climbed this thing 40 years ago"
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Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
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Bump, just because I really love this thread.
BITD mixed.
My lovely bride.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Tami sez: Preetty much exactly why I started drawing ice climbers as lunatics. Yehaw!
I know I'm getting on, and maybe my memory isn't what it once was, but I do seem to recall Tami on vertical ice, several thousand feet off the deck, hanging by one tool, with an arctic storm howling around her, goggles totally steamed up, scarf getting blown into her mouth... all while trying to re-attach the crampon that had popped off her boot and was now dangling from the ankle strap... (Yes, we had a rope, but it was in my pack, cuz it seemed less dangerous to solo than to freeze to death while belaying in those conditions).
Lunatic ice climbers, indeed.
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Al Barkamps
Social climber
Red Stick
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That's awesome....
Southern desperados on ice. I'm sure you guys didn't smell any different from us climbing in the Jewish Alps (Catskills) those years.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Kevin! Thanks for taking the time to post all those fun historic photos.
Sigh
I'm reminded of why I quit frozen-waterfall climbing in 1984, after 10 years of great fun & incredible luck.
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Ezra Ellis
Trad climber
North wet, and Da souf
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This is really neat!
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wbw
Trad climber
'cross the great divide
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This is really cool. Having grown up in KY, and strangely enough getting more and more into ice as I turn into a geriatric, it never would have occurred to me that ice of that magnitude even exists within 500 miles of Louisville. Some of those pillars look better than the scrappy little things that we play on here in CO.
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jumping up and down in the canoe to make a channel to the shore,
Let us know!