Progression

A Modern Master Traces the History of Contemporary Winter Climbing—ice, Alpine, Mixed and Dry—and Offers Thoughts on Style, Ethics and What’s Next.

- Will Gadd

NIAGAR A FALLS, 2015

My pick barely held in an inch of meringue on an overhanging ice wall. My closest pro, a hand-built prototype that looked like the offspring of a piton and a leprechaun’s shovel, had pulled the first and only time I tested it. But what really had my attention was the roar of Niagara Falls. I’ve done some crazy shit, but this was a whole new level of insanity. I leaned back on my tools and was smacked in the face with a pound of Lake Erie slush heading to sea. It tasted organic and old.

Looking up through the mist of the falls, I saw the black eye of a Red Epic camera staring back from the crane that was sweeping arcs above me. I knew that if I fell off now, it was going to be a really bad accident and a public relations nightmare for climbing.

Only when I reached the top of the falls did I believe that I’d actually gotten to climb it. This ascent, with Sarah Hueniken, was the culmination of my career—alpine climbing, spray ice, dry tooling, high-pressure competition wins and losses, friendships and the loss of friends, sunrises, sunsets, road trips, blood, sweat and literally frozen tears. When CNN’s Anderson Cooper (normally people like me have to do something really messy to make it onto his show) asked me why I’d done it, I told the truth: Because Niagara is the coolest waterfall on the planet, and I’m an ice climber. Now, as I finish my fifth decade (I’ll be 50 this spring) and start my 35th season of winter climbing, I need to both understand my own climbing path and examine winter climbing in general.

BEGINNINGS