Between Showers

Ice climbing choices

These people made the right choice on which side to climb…

After some time we finally found a waterfall, directly by the sea on a bay in the middle of a steep cliff. It was a strange formation—about 100 meters high of weird formed ice with icicles growing in every direction. We were highly motivated to do the first ascent of this spectacular waterfall.

For climbing we knew that we had to be on the left side of the waterfall always. To the right the ice did not look so good anymore. After we chose our line to climb, we were so psyched for the climbing that we abseiled down despite knowing that there was quite strong sunlight at the exit of the waterfall. The temps where ok, around -2°C, but we underestimated the strong sun.

But after some meters of climbing, a rumbling shocked us—the giant threw a monstrous load of ice against us. An ice roof fell down and crashed to the right of us into thousands of boulders. It was on the very right side at the exit of the waterfall where this huge ice roof broke off.