!44: Ice Axes For Safe Travel on Ice and Snowy Mountains

!±8± Ice Axes For Safe Travel on Ice and Snowy Mountains

When mountaineering, ski touring or even just hill walking in winter you may be required to cross patches of steep ice or climb on steep slopes of snow. If so you need to take special precautions to stay safe and one of your most important safety tools is an ice axe.

Ice axes are important for a number of tasks on mountains. Their most important purpose is to give you the ability to self-arrest, a term for stopping yourself if you happen to slip and start sliding down a steep snow-covered slope. This makes them essential safety tools. Without the ability stop yourself you will simply keep gaining speed as you slide. Self-arresting is an essential skill and needs to be practised regularly but essentially involves digging in the pick of the axe to gently slow and eventually stop this descent. Among the secondary functions are using the adze, or shovel, to cut steps into steep slopes. The shaft of the axe may also be plunged into the snow to provide an anchor, either to directly support a climber or to be used as a point for securing a rope.

Ice axes generally fall into three broad, if slightly overlapping categories. The first is walking ice axes, which are usually the longest with a straight shaft. They are good for hill walking, glacier crossing and climbing on gentle slopes. For slightly more technical climbing on steeper snow people generally prefer to use a shorter mountaineering or alpine ice axe. This may look very similar to the walking axe apart from its length, but they often also have a slightly curved shaft and a slightly more aggressive pick on the head, which allows them to be used for more technical climbing.

The third form consists of the much more technical climbing axe, which is generally referred to as an ice tool. These are very much shorter and are highly specialised for use in climbing frozen waterfalls and other patches of very steep ice. Because of this they are generally not able to be used for self arrest, cutting steps or any of the other traditional tasks of the more general mountaineering and climbing ice axes. Whichever form of ice axe you get, be sure that you are skilled in its use and practise regularly to ensure that you are able to keep yourself safe out in the mountains.