Ice Walls
I put relentless pressure on myself to project an image of grit. I don’t want to let other female climbers down.
Melting water runs in rivulets down the rock face. It freezes slowly and forms a breathing wall of ice that lives only until spring. Through the winter the wall ebbs and flows in a predictable rhythm. Its surface layer melts in the mid-morning sun and seeps along its own features before eventually solidifying again into different curves and edges of frozen water. The next day the process repeats. I stare up at the clear blue ice wall, and I imagine myself dripping along its face with the streams. The ice gives and takes. It grows, I grow, until the living formation overtakes the stagnant rock, and we are moving together to create an ever-changing landscape.
“You ready?” my partner asks, looking over at me through his many jackets and hoods. I break from my trance, meet his gaze, and nod slightly. I take the rope from his hands. My fingers are almost numb under my gloves. A thin layer of sweat coats the inside of the fabric, preventing my hands from staying warm. I take a breath and try to psych myself up for the climb. I imagine my body moving steadily up the wall of ice. I try to keep my thoughts as clear as the bluebird sky above, but the scene slips away easily, replaced by the numbing sensation in my fingers.
There is a pressure among rock climbers to find the sport of ice climbing romantic and exhilarating. It represents the height of rock climbing’s potential. It’s December. The rock faces are too snowy for our fingers to grip, our bodies are covered in too many puffy layers for peak dexterity—and yet with a few pieces of sharp metal, we are able to climb amid the most hostile of conditions. Instead of fingertips, we use metal axes. Instead of climbing shoes, we use sturdy boots and crampons. Instead of traditional climbing gear or bolts, we use ice screws with alpine draws attached. Add a couple of down jackets and a flask or two of whiskey for extra warmth, and we have ourselves a comfortable climbing crag all through the winter. If rock climbing is our sport of choice for the other three seasons, why wouldn’t we choose to substitute in ice climbing when the weather gets cold?
To be female in the climbing realm adds to this harsh sport an additional level of pressure. Male climbers and mountaineers have been celebrated since the first ascent of Mont Blanc in the 1700s, but it is not until recently that females have been able to publicly stake as much claim to the sport. While a few notable European women began pushing the boundaries and expectations for females within the sport in the early 1800s, the movement did not gain much public traction, especially in the United States, until the late 20th century. Even then, whether measured in terms of sponsorships, media coverage, or compensation, professional US climbers like Lynn Hill and Beth Rodden experienced blatant inequality.
As a recreational female climber in a community overwhelmingly composed of men, I feel pressure to maintain composure, to project a fearless image. That does not mean that my fears or discomforts disappear as soon as I pick up an ice tool. It just means that I more often find myself hiding them behind a façade of spunky enthusiasm.
My partner, a cold weather enthusiast, has been obsessed with the sport since he first stumbled down a YouTube rabbit hole of ice climbing videos. He found dozens of films demonstrating athletes hacking elegantly at walls of frozen water and finagling their bodies up to the top with grace. These videos led to other epic tales of mountaineering, and it became clear to him that, to fulfill his dream of becoming the next big professional ski mountaineer, he must start ice climbing at his local outdoor crag. Lucky for him, we live in Bozeman, Montana, which is right at the foot of Hyalite Canyon—whose ice climbing is world-renowned.
I, however, have never daydreamed of climbing up to ice-capped mountain peaks, or sleeping on the sides of cliffs with icicles on my eyelashes and seven layers of socks on my feet. I thrive in summer outdoor conditions. I lead students on backpacking trips of 20 days or more, and teach others about the joys of backcountry living and travel. I love living out of a tent and using my body in a variety of ways to explore the outdoors. I enjoy climbing specifically because it requires finesse and mental focus. But my body is quick to lose its heat, and I am quick to lose my drive, when the temperature falls below freezing.
Back at the crag, I tie the sopping wet rope into my harness, check the knot and my partner’s carabiner, and meander toward the daunting wall of seeping water. There are multiple parties of climbers at this location, yet the area is largely silent. Silent except for the frozen waterfall, unfreezing, running on its own surface, running in the crevices of the rock below, then re-solidifying upon itself. Melting, running, freezing. Melting, running, freezing. Melting, running, freezing…
I thrust the axes into the wall one at a time until they stick, then move my feet up, delicately. My body balances parallel to the vertical ice, hanging on only by four metal spikes. I continue these motions slowly. My forearms swell and burn, and my fingers, gripping the handles of the tools, increasingly lose sensation. By the time I reach the top, I am no longer confident that my fingers or toes exist. It feels as though at the ends of my limbs are giant blocks of ice.
“Take!” I shout at the top, and my partner responds by pulling the rope tight. I glance around briefly at the horizon. Hyalite Canyon is spectacular. I am so small amid this landscape of 10,000-foot peaks. The mountains don’t care that I am climbing on their surfaces, or that others are probably skiing within the canyon’s depths. Our adventures make little impact on them, yet we can be dragged around, lifted up, or broken at their smallest whim. So easily could my body be absorbed by the jagged, snow-capped peaks; to someone standing across the canyon on the tip of Mount Blackmore, I would look like nothing more than a speck among the rocks and ice. Pine trees silently sway in the wind, dropping hunks of snow atop the already thick blanket. A soft flurry coats everything around me in a silent white.
My partner lowers me softly to the ground. My feet finally hit the packed snow and I shake out my hands violently, hoping that the sensation returns soon but knowing that it will be a few minutes before I can feel those parts of my body again. Suddenly my vision clouds with unexpected tears, and I turn my face back toward the wall so that my partner doesn’t notice. This happens quite often in cold conditions—the dread of not being able to rewarm my figure runs so deep that I often end up fighting off panic-driven sobs. Despite the hundreds of nights that I have spent in the backcountry, and the dozens of lessons on “staying warm” that I have taught as an outdoor educator, I can never shake the feeling that the cold will triumph, and I will end up a helpless, crumpled ball of ice.
When I first began camping, long before I was teaching others about the outdoors or recreating in my own time, I went on a school-organized winter expedition. I was 16. I went to the Rocky Mountains for a 10-day skiing and snow-camping trip. The prospect sounded okay, though I had never skied before and also knew nothing about keeping myself comfortable in below-freezing conditions. The trip itself did nothing to allay my concerns either, despite reassurances from my instructors that “winter camping wasn’t too bad, and could even be fun!” Skiing was a slog: We skinned through deep snow for miles on telemark skis with heavy sleds attached to our 50-pound backpacks, and I, ignorant to the techniques of powder skiing, regularly ended up face down in the snow. We would travel to our next day’s campsite, shovel snow into piles a few meters high, and then travel back to our previous site to let the piles settle for a full night. The following day we would skin back to our snow piles and dig them out into snow caves that would act as that evening’s shelter. We would then repeat that process again, for the duration of the trip.
On day four, already worn out and reliably cold despite being layered like an onion, I traveled out about 100 yards from our campsite to use the bathroom. The “bathroom” was a pit dug out on the side of a hill with a plastic toilet seat perched upon a deep hole. I sat, took off my gloves to untie the toilet paper bag, and was caught off guard by a harsh burst of wind that persisted for several minutes. By the time the wind died down my hands were too white and numb to even re-zip my pants or re-tie the bag. I popped my skis on and rushed back to the campsite, waving my hands violently at shoulder level. The instructors rushed out of their shelters, examined my waxy hands with wide eyes, and immediately sprung into action. My hands went directly onto the young male instructor’s stomach for rapid re-warming, and the older instructors scurried off to boil some water, retrieve a pair of thick mittens, and grab the first aid kit.
“Frostbite,” the first instructor informed me, “can come on quickly in cold and windy temperatures. What we’re doing now is rewarming your hand. It will be painful, but you’ll be okay. Once we warm the hands back up, we can think about what’s next.”
It was indeed very painful. The sensation that one gets while rewarming a body part after a freezing cold injury is widely known as the “screaming barfies.” The term perfectly describes my response to the process, as it felt like the only way to escape the pain was to simultaneously scream and wretch. As the blood seeped back into my extremities, I was overcome with nausea and pain so deep it was like my body was eating itself from the inside out. I keeled over as my insides twisted. My hands were so hot, they could have been at the center of a fire. I wailed like a child as my instructor held tightly to my wrists and averted his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I thought I heard him mutter at various points.
After a few minutes—I couldn’t tell exactly how many—my fingers seemed to come back to life. The skin was raw and painful, but at least it was there. Within an hour, the skin was covered with giant, puss-filled blisters. I thought for sure I would be on my way out of the snowy hellscape after my instructors saw the new wounds, but they were convinced that they could keep me warm, comfortable, and frostbite-free for the last six days of the trip.
“We’ll just keep you nice and bundled up in a thick pair of gloves and you should be fine. If you get cold again, let us know. You can always put your hands back onto one of our stomachs,” the female instructor told me, with a hesitant smile.
The next week was almost unbearable, but no one seemed to care enough about my misery to give up a day of skiing in order to escort me out of the mountains. In retrospect, the experience was not so bad, in the sense that I came out alive and well, and if I were an instructor I probably would have thought I was fine too. Still, as a 16-year-old inexperienced outdoorswoman, that trip did not leave me yearning for future winter adventure. It left me traumatized—to this day, the memories of that full-body pain return in stark detail as soon as my fingers begin to lose heat.
Now, as a 25-year-old outdoor professional, I strain to keep my fear at bay. As a woman trying to be taken seriously in a primarily masculine environment, that composure becomes more important still. To assert my own competence, I must put on a fixed front of ease and strength. Too quickly are female outdoor athletes dismissed as soft, risk-averse, or emotional.
My trauma and subsequent phobia of freezing-cold injuries have impeded my progress in the world of outdoor education and recreation. It is difficult to instruct others in the outdoors when I am not fully confident in my own safety. Yet I find it almost impossible to speak up about my anxieties. I would rather agonize in silence than face the threat of being over-coddled or labeled as weak and incapable. I’m sure many outdoorswomen feel the same.
Back in Hyalite Canyon, my partner unties the knot from my harness so that he can attach it to his own.
He smiles at me and says, “That looked great! How’d it feel?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure,” I tell him. “My hands were so cold.” I keep shaking my fingers vigorously, but nothing about their status changes.
“Okay, yeah. You get used to it, though. Maybe you can try different gloves next time?”
I feel the heat rushing to my cheeks and realize that his response elicits unexpected anger. I want sympathy. I want him to say, “Yeah, you’re right. It is cold. Let’s leave and do something that won’t make you feel like shit.” I want him to acknowledge my pain, and my fear, and my dread at the prospect of being here for a couple more hours, and I want him to take care of it all for me. I want things that I could never, and would never, ask of him. And how could he respond to my pain if he never knows about it in the first place?
Still, I don’t want any of that. I want to keep climbing, both for my own sake and for the reputation of female climbers. The more I push myself to do things in cold environments, the more likely I’ll be able to transcend my anxieties. If I could climb one more route without my hands falling off, maybe I could convince my body that it doesn’t need to produce tears every time my hands begin to freeze. And maybe if I don’t cry, then I can eventually persuade myself that I do, in fact, enjoy cold environments. As long as the hypothetical possibility of a phobia-free future endures, it feels like continually inserting myself into uncomfortable situations might even be worth it.
I put relentless pressure on myself to maintain an image of strength and determination so as not to let down other women in the outdoor community. Male climbers already have a path carved out for them; female climbers need to find their own way. I wonder, though, how much of this work needs to rest solely on the shoulders of women. How can the climbing community as a whole work to further elevate the voices and skills of women?
I have found, through many years of trial and error, that there are spaces within the community that are comfortable, supportive, and empowering. I have had male climbing partners who ask first for my voice; who intentionally provide space for me to ask questions, share my opinion, and express hesitations without judgement; who seek to problem solve routes together as a team; who openly share with me their own mistakes and vulnerabilities. I want to make this the cultural norm instead of the outlier, though—I want women to exist comfortably within the sport and to gain the same amount of respect and support as any male climber would, but I do not want this to occur at the expense of female athletes along the way. I have not yet figured out how to strike this balance, but I do believe that it is possible.
As I glance back up at the ice wall, I imagine the energy each water molecule must expend to find its place on the harsh rock. Such an intricate ice formation consists of an unfathomable number of these molecules, and even then, the ice never stops moving or changing. Instead, it melts, runs, freezes… melts, runs, freezes… upon itself, until finally, at seasons end, it all disappears. ▩