Learning how to use an ice axe

[Douglas Ray]

In response to question about arresting with your feet down vs. your knees. Without crampons on kicking your feet down will definitely help you stop quicker, particularly in hard snow conditions where you will be sliding fast.

This may be an area where mountaineering and "backpacking with an ice-axe" are different. When you are pursuing a summit and you know you will be climbing steep snow you pretty much always have crampons with you. If conditions and terrain are such that you would be able to slide very fast you will probably be wearing them, because they will make your climbing much more secure. This might not be the case for a backpacker who takes an ice-axe along in the early season to get through whatever conditions they find for a relatively small part of there trip, and the weight of crampons being prohibitive for the small amount of time that they might be used.

The process of snow-climbing for a mountaineer is typically that they learn the techniques described above, and than practice them for many hour on many slopes that are less than 45 degrees and not terribly icy. They tend to develop more technique for stopping slips from becoming true falls. The self-belay technique, often modified by getting one good foot placement in the process (If your planted foot breaks loose while taking a step, you can often kick the other foot in before your torso hits the slope). In harder conditions where the axe can't really plunge, one can climb with the pick towards the slope and deliberately fall onto the axe so it digs in immediately. In really deep, soft, snow, the only hope of stopping a fall would be to plunge the shaft and get your weight over it. Fortunately in such conditions you don't accelerate very quickly so you have time for such manoeuvres. Climbing snow often involves a fair amount of sliding and sinking as you compress it enough to hold you in some fashion, so you get to where you can think and employ a variety of techniques, and stopping a fall becomes an extension of all your climbing technique often involving all four limbs in whatever form they are equipped, always trying to stop moving as quickly as possible.

They sometimes climb steeper slopes in hard conditions (where self-arrest would be impossible) and learn to dagger with the ice-axe and front-point with crampons. This is often learned roped until the climber becomes confident to solo up to 60 degree alpine ice.

At that point the climber will be very comfortable with feeling out and trusting steps and crampon placements, enough so that they will no longer be concerned about falling when on a <45 degree slope in snow one can kick any sort of a step in. Hence you often see mountaineers crossing such a slope with just poles, and climbing with a short technical tool that would be lousy to self-arrest with. Advanced mountaineers realistically would only end-up preforming a classic self-arrest manoeuvre in stopping a crevass fall on a glacier, or catching the fall of a client they were roped to when guiding. In any other conditions where self-arrest would work, they will never reach the point of needing it.

I read a lot of controversy on the internet that I think is the difference between the basic technique and the techniques actually employed by climbers most of the time. The more advanced technique is preferable in every way, but I think that you have to learn the basic self-arrest technique so that you have a back-up for your learning process. I suppose it is also an issue that those who don't pursue mountaineering avidly may not get enough exposure to develop all of those advanced techniques.

[Anonymous]

"It complicates things a bit, but it can also be good protection. If you have a pack on your back, you can lean back on it with your shoulders to force it into the snow face, so it can help you control your speed. Plus, it will take some of the beating that would go onto your back or shoulders ordinarily."

Not on hard snow, or ice.

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