All Mixed up on The Big Drip

I swiped this from Chicks with Picks. Just goes to show , we are all looking for something different.


http://www.adventure-journal.com/2010/12/all-mixed-up-on-the-real-big-drip/

Ice climbing is a dodgy business. Protection is poor to nonexistent, cold and wet are often unrelenting, and your route breaks and crumbles under your tools and in worst case scenarios detaches and falls to the ground entirely. It’s also beautifully aesthetic, incredible addicting, and nearly as different from rock climbing as night is from day.

This video of Black Diamond athlete Jesse Huey probably won’t make you run out and drop $700 on carbon fiber-handled tools, but it sure gives a sense of the mission on what Huey calls “one of the biggest, baddest mixed climbs in the world.”

Located in the Ghost Wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, The Real Big Drip is rated M7 WI 6, which means a mixed climbing 7 on a scale that goes to M12 and water ice 6 on a scale of 7. Brrrly.

“My first trip into the RBD is forever seared into my memory banks,” writes Huey. “Mouth wide open, I watched as my partner sailed 30 feet through perfectly overhanging air after breaking a hold while punching it for the ice above the last bolt. An hour later, finding myself 15 feet above his exact position, all I can remember is shaking so heavily that I could barely clip the anchor and say “off belay.” In normal years, the RBD is much tamer. Returning this last year, I looked over from the safety of the hanging ice at the section we dry tooled the year before. Maybe a year wiser, or just a little more weary of the consequence, I just shook my head and vowed to never do something like that again.”

Never? As if.

BD grassroots athlete Jesse Huey on The Real Big Drip (M7 WI 6), Canadian Rockies from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.