Ice Climbing - Starting 2011 Off with a Bang

2011 is starting to look like a good year for outdoor experiences.  And it's a year where I'm promising myself to explore and adventure more than I did last year.  To start the year off right and create an experience doing something I've never done before, I went Ice Climbing. 

Ice Climbing
This is something I've always seen pictures of and thought that it would probably be a pretty amazing thing to try out.  So for 2011, I decided it was time to do it.  A friend and I went up to The Ice Pit near Green Bay, WI for the 2nd annual Ice Pit Festival.  (Yes, there is Ice Climbing in Wisconsin - who would have thought)  It was a weekend of frigid temperatures, but we didn't let that stop us.  We packed enough clothes and gear to last us for a week and we only were there for the day. 

Once there - we layered up and went and borrowed Ice Climbing gear from the wonderful guys who were there working the festival.  Thanks to their knowledge - we walked away with everything we needed to hit the wall of ice.

What we didn't expect were the lines.  After hanging around for a few hours we finally got to the front of the line.  Now remember - I had never done this before and neither had my friend, we learned from YouTube Videos how to Ice Climb.  The girl in the video made it look easy.  Thankfully we had plenty of time to watch the people in front of us as well and realized it may not be as easy as the girl in the video made it look. 

So off to the wall of ice I go (yeah, I got to go first).  After sitting in frigid temperatures for hours in the shade, once I started Ice Climbing, I realized this is quite a work out.  After a few feet you'll be swinging that ice axe and starting to sweat.  After a few more feet (these walls were 60 or so feet high) and with your arms constantly swinging above your head to get the ice axe to stick - your hands will start to get cold and freeze from all the blood draining out of them. 

Getting Read to Climb



Starting the Climb




Climbing

 But don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining.  The ice climbing experience was awesome and I'll do it again when I get the chance.  It has a lot of the same techniques as rock climbing which I love to do, but in a whole new format.  I love winter and the outdoors, so this will just be an extension of the things I can now do in the great outdoors in winter. 

Anyone want to ice climb?