The end of ice climbing?

For ice climbers, with their short season and fickle medium, warmer winters have hit hard

By Alan Wechsler

Driving to Pitchoff Mountain on Route 73 in early January—our first day ice climbing this winter—I took note of the sorry state of classic ice routes. Rock faces that should have been fat with ice, were not. 

Roaring Brook Falls, one of the most popular moderate routes, was a stream of water surrounded by white spray ice pasted on rock. The fearsome Power Play at Chapel Pond hadn’t yet touched the ground, and Chouinard’s Gully looked more like a thread of ice than the frozen vertical highway it usually is. 

For ice climbers, with their short season and fickle medium, warmer winters have hit hard. 

Many days, the Rock and River Ice Report website reads like a farewell to the sport. “December of 2023 was perhaps the worst I’ve seen in…42 years of ice climbing,” posted Ed Palen, owner of the Rock and River guide service. 

“It’s getting worse and worse every year, almost systematically,” he said during a recent interview. “Our season has shortened by a week, maybe two, on either end, and our guides are working less. And there’s still as many people who want to go, so now they’re getting crammed into six weeks instead of 10.”

Palen estimates that his guides book about 25% fewer “client-days” compared to the mid 1990s. “The guides just can’t make a living working six weeks,” he said. 

An obscure sport

Ice climbing, the cold-weather cousin to rock climbing, will always be something of an obscure activity. Gear is expensive, skills hard-won, discomfort almost a given—shivering on a windswept belay ledge; clothes soaked by dripping meltwater; fingers freezing on a tough ascent, resulting in the dreaded “screaming barfies.” For some that’s the appeal. 

“Yankee Rock and Ice,” a history of climbing in the Northeast, says early practitioners ascended New Hampshire ice pinnacles by laboriously cutting steps into the cliffs. In the 1970s, front-point crampons, aggressive ice axes, and hollow screws allowed for climbing straight up walls that were previously unobtainable. 

Today’s gear provides easier and safer climbs. This has helped to popularize the sport, along with the growth of indoor climbing gyms, “look at me!” social media posts and the success of recent climbing movies. Today, ice climbing is less intimidating and more appealing to the weekend climber. 

A pity, then, about the warm winters. 

“It’s something I really want to stay a staple of outdoor Adirondack recreation,” said ice-climbing guide Zack Floss of Guide ADK. “It’s really hard to say how that will look.”

Floss, 34, has been guiding ice climbs for five years. He’s seen expanded interest, based on customers reaching out to him for lessons. “I think the number of days I’ll be calling clients and saying, ‘Can we reschedule?’ will be increasing,” he said.

Interest is clear. The Adirondack outdoor sports festival, Mountainfest, draws scores of enthusiasts for its ice climbing, mountaineering, and backcountry skiing seminars. The weekend event, in its 26th year, attracts about 250 people to Keene Valley and the High Peaks. Last year it raised more than $20,000 for local schools, fire departments and nonprofits and brought income to hotels and restaurants. 

Organizers recently moved the festival from Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to early February, anticipating more consistent ice and snow deeper into the winter, according to organizer and Mountaineer outdoor store owner Charlie Wise. 

In addition, locals last year organized a Queer Ice Fest in Keene Valley, attracting about 50 people. 

Warm winters ahead

Yet, the New York State Climate Impacts Assessment predicts a warming winter in the Adirondacks. By the end of the century, for instance, Lake Placid will see only two to 11 days below zero, the state assessment’s recent report states. It also predicts more extreme weather events, including heavier rainstorms. Storms of that nature have already caused damaging floods in the Adirondacks.

Weather data show a consistent warming of Adirondack winters, said Natasha Karniski-Keglovits, a biologist with the Adirondack Ecological Center, a part of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

From 1986 to 1996, winters at Newcomb averaged 17.3 degrees. From 1997 to 2007, the average rose to 18.3, and from 2008 to 2018, to 18.8. Then there was last winter, when ESF staff recorded an average of 23 degrees.

In addition, lakes on the property now ice over for about two weeks less than in the 1970s, Karniski-Keglovits said.

Deep cold is not a friend to the ice climber. Cold ice tends to “dinner-plate”—shatter upon impact—in frigid conditions, and it’s harder to get a “stick” with your ice tools. Freeze/thaw, on the other hand, helps to recharge “pegged-out” ice by filling in pick holes with fresh water. Wind and drippings also make for interesting formations, such as bizarre fins and icicles that stick out at odd angles. 

Whereas occasional thaws can recharge an ice route, heavy rains can destroy everything. A look through the 2022-23 journal of veteran climber Don Mellor exemplifies the trend. His first climb was in early December, weeks later than normal in the High Peaks. A thaw at the end of December knocked off most of the limited ice that had formed.

 “This winter seems worst in record for ice climbing,” Mellor wrote. A few days later, he put his foot through the usually frozen Cascade Lake while headed to a climb. Soon after, he abandoned a trip to the massive ice walls of Lake Willoughby in Vermont, due to pouring rain. The season might have ended for most climbers in late February, but for a cold spell in March that resurrected routes for a few more weeks. 

A shorter season has resulted in weekend warriors swarming popular destinations like Pitchoff, Chapel Pond, the Canyon and Poke-O-Moonshine. And many are driving further. The Catskill Mountains were once home to many great ice routes. Now those routes rarely form. 

The future of ice climbing

 “Ice Climbing Is Having Its Moment, but How Much Longer Will the Ice Be Around?” an essayist asked in the New York Times. The writer noted that climbers are flocking to New Hampshire as well as destinations like a manmade ice park in Colorado.

In Europe, climbers in the Alps are being killed by falling ice as permafrost melts and glaciers collapse. And a study coordinated by the American Alpine Club found that the number of climbable days for ice in the White Mountains could shrink to a mere 30 days by the end of the century, according to the Times article. 

Ian Osteyee of Keene Valley, who has been climbing Adirondack ice for 40 years, specializes in first ascents up thin and potentially dangerous routes. These are the sort of routes that may appear only once in five years, and then disappear in only a day or two because of melt or sublimation. 

“I’ve fooled myself into some pretty scary places over the years,” he said. “That is what excites me.”

For routes like that, wild temperature swings may be beneficial in releasing meltwater at the right moment. But in other spots, too many freeze/thaws could dry out whatever aquifer above is generating the route. 

“It’s pretty obvious that the seasons are shorter,” he said. “We may have lost the ability to climb some of the weird, obscure routes.”

Mellor, 70, another long-time Adirondack climber from Lake Placid, points out that the Adirondacks have seen numerous warm spells. He recalls rock climbing in summer clothes during a January thaw in the 1980s. Yet he observes that the long, deep cold spells that used to define the Adirondack winter are long gone. 

“With the worry about climate change, ice climbing is so irrelevant to the things that matter,” he said. Yet he envisions a day when Adirondackers will say: “‘They used to ice climb around here.’”