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Ice Climbing Tools Overview

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There is something about approaching a frozen waterfall and saying to yourself, “I think I may want to climb you.” A friend of mine is really into ice climbing, I think he just likes to pound pick axes into the ice and make pretty snow chips. Whatever his reasons are he is pretty good at it, and he definitely has some specialized gear; the kind of gear that you don’t find at garage sales.

Mountaineering combines aspects of hiking, rock climbing and ice climbing as well as navigation. For mountaineering the tools have longish shafts and have a classic look to their ice picks. Typically mountaineering tools are not as technical as the tools used specifically for ice climbing. They are not as aggressive and are more accessible.

If you are interested in more technical climbing the types of tools you will need to get look much different than their mountaineering counterparts. The shafts on technical ice climbing tools are short and bent, modular head and some fierce looking picks. So what are we talking about when we say “shaft” or “picks”? Let’s take a closer look at some of these tools.

Next Page: Shafts

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