ICE slivers spray at my face as I thunk the axe pick into the frozen waterfall. With some swings, larger chunks crack from its surface. Nearly 14 metres high on a piece of vertical ice, I realize I'm chipping away at the very waterfall I'm trying to climb. Pieces of it bounce and cr ash as they fall to its base.
My outstretched arms and legs are straddling an ice column that formed over this cliffside, outside Hampton, NB. Below me, Joe Kennedy encourages me to go on.
The veteran ice climber can scale this 14-metre waterfall in the time it takes me to get my boots on. "The thing about ice climbing is gaining 100 per cent confidence in the gear. And it's not natural. With
rock climbing, your fingers are in the rock. With ice climbing, you're a little more separated. It's a little more abstract."
Kennedy is one of only a dozen or so people who regularly ice climbs in New Brunswick. Yet the province's cold winters, hilly topography and granite formations provide some of the best ice-climbing spots in the Maritimes-and even as far south as New Hampshire. While 2,000 climbers may attempt a sheet of ice in New York State on a given weekend, an ice-climbing pair in New Brunswick may find peaceful solitude on a frozen waterfall.
Indeed, the province is one of the best places to ice climb along the Eastern Seaboard, says Steve Adamson, a rock and ice climber who has scaled some of the world's most mountainous peaks. "The cliffs around here, with the ice and the rock, are as good as you'll find anywhere else in the world," he says. "The only thing we really don't have is the mountains."
Since its Canadian baptism in the Rockies in the early 1970s, the sport of waterfall ice climbing has progressed from an obscure diversion for a few fanatics to a common and popular winter pastime. Its roots lie in the European mountaineering of the 19th century. Carrying long, heavy axes, climbers had to cut steps into the ice, making the sport a slow and arduous one. In the 20th century, it was revolutionized by two developments: the British design of a toothed claw-called a crampon-that attached to mountaineering boots, and the American re-engineering of the ice axe, allowing steeper ice to be scaled. Even with its vast number of frozen waterfalls, however, few people ventured to ice climb in Canada until 1972, the year the American ice axe arrived in Calgary.
The sport slowly moved east, arriving in New Brunswick in 1977, when Colin Bell, Giles LeCroix and Fred Doucet-founders of the University of New Brunswick rock and ice climbing club in Fredericton-made the first recorded ice climb at the granite cliffs in Welsford, outside Saint John. Three years later, Steve Adamson, who had been climbing since he was 14 in his native home of England, moved to New Brunswick. In his 22 years climbing in the province, the Rothesay man can be credited for naming many of the province's climbing routes, an honour bestowed to those who make a first ascent. As an instructor at the New Brunswick Community College in Saint John, he also developed the Maritime's largest indoor climbing wall and wrote a book on climbing in the province.
Adamson, 42, who is planning his second mountaineering trek up Mount Everest in 2004, is passionate about rock climbing. He climbs ice only because the Canadian winters are too long for him to remain idle. "To me, I couldn't live without it. It's not a sport. It's what I do. Everything else is a sport to support my habit."
Unlike Adamson, Joe Kennedy of Hampton prefers climbing ice over rock. It has something to do with scaling a wall that can turn fluid in a few warm days. "It's the abstract challenge of climbing a frozen waterfall," he says.
Kennedy was an enthusiastic freshman at the University of New Brunswick when he made his first climb on a 4.5-metre-high ice curtain along the Trans-Canada Highway in January 1983. Almost every weekend since, the wildlife biologist has been found scaling a rock face or a sheet of ice in the province. On the job, he uses his rock climbing skills in the summer to tag peregrine falcon chicks nesting on the rock cliffs in Fundy National Park. Throughout the winter, he records New Brunswick's ice-climbing conditions on a Web site he's dedicated to the sport.
Every winter, more people in New Brunswick are joining the sport. Part of the credit goes to the indoor climbing walls, which allow people to try climbing in a safe and warm environment located within the city. This has its advantages and disadvantages, Adamson says. "The walls have probably tenfold increased the number of climbers, which is a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. It's nice to have the cliffs all quiet, but it's also nice to have folks out there enjoying the sport. It's a mixed blessing."
Denise Hamel, who was introduced to the sport six years ago by her partner, Shawn Bethune, believes she is the only woman to regularly ice climb in New Brunswick. "It's not attractive to women," she says. "You've got two crampons on your feet, two axes in your hands, and it's freezing. Even using the washroom, it's difficult for women." But it's the aggressive nature of ice climbing-more so than rock climbing-that can deter women the most, she believes. "To me, it's two different sports altogether because it's so different. I find ice climbing more aggressive. There's more of a mental challenge because it's another layer over the rock. The rock is there; it's always there. But ice only comes once a year and it's different each time." Women can also be intimidated by the mental challenge of the sport, she says. "When it comes to ice climbing, I think women think too much. We picture the ice coming off. We can see the consequences." On this warm February day outside Hampton, I'm guilty of this. Water is pouring over the cliff side above, gurgling behind the ice wall and rushing out at its base-a sound that can be soothing coming from a garden fountain on a warm summer's day. Stuck on a frozen waterfall, however, the uninitiated ice climber finds new meaning in the sound of trickling water. In its cannibalistic way, I realize, the water is eroding its frozen self. As I ponder whether to take another stab at the ice and the chance to summit this waterfall, I begin to picture the consequences. I rappel down and vow next time I'll make it to the summit-in July.
For more information:
Joe Kennedy's ice climbing Web site: www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/6319/
Steve Adamson's climbing guide to New Brunswick has sold out. He's now working on a new selected climbing guide book to Welsford, according to his climbing Web site: www.travel.to/climber.
Most ice climbers are rock climbers who have either learned from an experienced climber or who have taken a course through the many climbing clubs now available. In New Brunswick, the UNB Rock and Ice Climbing Club and the New Brunswick Community Colleges in both Saint John and St. Andrews maintain climbing walls.
For information on the University of New Brunswick Rock and Ice Climbing Club: www.unbf.ca/clubs/climb/
To find out about the climbing club at the New Brunswick Community Campus in Saint John, call (506) 658-6741 or visit http://electronics.saintjohn.nbcc.nb.ca/steve/climbing.
Call (506) 529-5272 for information about the climbing club at NBCC St. Andrews.