Early Season Pre-flight Check

OK, now ice climbing season is truly upon us. For those willing and able, exciting frozen cragging awaits. But before you pack your sack and head for the hills, you’ll do yourself a favor by making an inspection of all your equipment. If you’re like me, after your last alpine or ice adventure of the spring/summer season, you’ve put your cold weather climbing equipment away in safe storage for the past several months. Inevitably, there is bound to be a loose pick or dull front point that you should take care of before heading out on your first ice climbing excursion of the season. The base of the route is not the place to be trying to do this type of pre-season maintenance either. I like to get my stuff out, visually inspect it and even pack my sack with gear to make sure it is good to go beforehand. Maybe, you just got a bunch of new stuff. Well, this too, needs to be checked out first prior to heading out and climbing with it.

So go get your stuff, a file and appropriate wrenches and lay it all out somewhere you can take a look at it all.

Here’s a list of some of the things I like to check on before heading out.

Axes:

1. Check the picks. Are they tight?
2. Are they the ones you want in there this time of year (T picks for mixed and hard use, B for more delicate or brittle ice)?
3. Are they sharp? If not, either sharpen or replace them.
4. Adjustment tools: do you have a small kit of them to keep with you in your pack? It is easy for the picks to come lose out on the ice during the first day.

Crampons:

1. Are the points sharp? Probably not, since most people don’t sharpen these as much as they do their picks and especially so if your last climbing was on an alpine route. It is really important to have the bottom points nice and sharp this time of year since a lot of the stream bed ice is not yet covered in snow, so you’ll be walking around a lot on very slippery surfaces. Take a file (I’ve even used a grinder to speed things up) and sharpen all the points on your crampons.
2. If you have replaceable front points, you may consider putting in new ones. I’ll often just sharpen up my old ones for the early season and save the new ones for a little later on when the ice is nice and fat.
3. Are the straps trimmed to proper length? This is more of an issue with brand new crampons, but it never hurts to check them anyway. Excessively long straps are a menacing nuisance!
4. Bail keeper tabs? You know, the bendy, metal thing with the ring in it that is connected to your toe bail and allows you to pass your strap through it. If you still have these on crampons with bails, take them off! Cut ‘em with wire cutters. Why they are put on bailed crampons I have no idea. One thing I do know is that if you use them and your heel clamp slips off of your heel (which DOES happen), then the crampon can fall completely off of your boot. Without this, the strap will secure more tightly around your ankle (and be much shorter), keeping your crampon attached to your boot should the heel clamp slip off.
5. Antibots: are they in good condition? Do they need replacement?
6. Check all the bolts to make sure they are secure and properly tightened.
7. Put them on your boots to make sure they are adjusted for the ones you are going to use. If you last used them on your double, plastic boots and now plan on using single, leather boots, they probably need to be adjusted to fit. Make sure to check this. I have seen countless people show up for the first climb of the season with crampons that don’t fit their boots well. Often, they seem to fit well at home, in the living room, but not so well out in the field. You need to make sure that you’ve got a tight snap of the heel clamp while getting a secure, solid clasp of the bail around your boot toe rand. There should be little to no side to side movement of your boot toe in the bail. If there is, consider modifying the bail shape or, better yet, get a smaller bail that better fits the shape of your boot toe. This is an often overlooked part of the equipment use.

Boots:

1. Check the soles and outer fabric to make sure all is in good condition. Do the soles need to be replaced? Are their any excessive wear marks or holes in the fabric on the uppers? If so, can it be repaired?
2. Treat you leather with good weather sealant.
3. Check/replace laces.
4. Try them on and make sure they still fit you well. You may even want to wear them around your house a bit to make sure they’re going to be OK for that hour long approach hike. I’ve seen people get terrible blisters from the hike that prevented them from climbing as a result of wearing new boots all too often.
5. Consider replacing or getting new custom footbeds. These not only feel nicer under foot, but will help you be much more precise with your feet (and warmer!) due to a better fit and connection between your foot-toes and the boot (and, eventually by extension, the crampons).
6. All in all the foot to crampon connection should be very secure and comfortable feeling. When your foot is in the boot with the crampon on, you should feel little to no play or movement of your foot within the boot when pushing the crampons from side to side, up and down and so forth. Also, check to make sure there is no discomfort. If you are guarding your foot due to pain or discomfort, you won’t be able to kick an place it very effectively.

Other:

1. Gloves. Check all your gloves and make sure they have no holes and are treated with weather proofing. People will spend a lot of money and time getting a good set of boots, but then cheap out and neglect their gloves, which are the basically boots for the hands. Get a FEW pairs of good fitting, durable, high performance gloves and you will notice huge improvements in your ice climbing.
2. Screws. I like to check them all to look for burrs and nicks in the threads and teeth. If I see any, I set them aside for either home maintenance (difficult) or for sending into Ouray Mountain Sports to have them professionally resharpened. If I’m in doubt, I have them resharpened. Dull ice screw suck. No explanation necessary. Getting them professionally resharpened is like getting brand new screws for a fraction of the cost.
3. Helmet. If you’ve been using it for rock climbing lately, it probably is not adjusted to fit your head with a hat on. Adjust it to do so. In the field adjustments will likely result in an improper fit. Then you’re likely to have a helmet that falls off to the back of your head when you’re looking up, exposing the frontal lobe to the battering from above. Make sure your helmet fits well at home.
4. Pack. Make sure that any holes in the fabric, broken buckles or zippers are repaired. Also, make sure that everything fits nicely in and on it.
5. Clothes. Ditto with these, but I won’t go on about them.

So, suffice it to say, there is a lot you can do now that will save you frustration and possible fright in the field with your ice climbing equipment. This is the perfect time to get the stuff out, check it out, fondle it (yeah, I said fondle) and get psyched for that first trip out ice climbing!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 at 10:17 am and is filed under Cragging, Training and Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.