It’s cold. We shuffle together in a straight line over the frozen waters. Snowpack crunches underneath my shoddy snowshoes. Umbilicaled together, we are dragged along by our techy leader on his planks of scandinavian engineering. We spot a climb on the cliffside of Grand Island and radio over to the team who’s been watching us up on the cliffside. A scramble up and a corral of the members to the trail. A bit more limping leads us to the cliff edge where the pitch lay. Adjacent to the thin smeary line we intended was a refrigerator sized serrated knife of ice, barely attached and overhanging over the sandstone cliffs. I had first go and on the lower down I realized how thin our pitch was looking, so thin in fact that the base of the climb was a 2-3 inch hollow ice mushroom that you could punch through with a stern glare. After a fun and careful go, we cycled through the rest of our party. It was getting dark and a climber and I decided to make a headstart back. It went pitch black, then the snow came, then the wind. Fast flurries glistened by headlight like CRT static. Our tracks covered and only barely evident by the slight lip where steel heels push deep. Blinding lights behind us follow at incredible pace, and then pass. We conjoin all together back at the cars and nestle back in the warm corners of floors and couches for the next winter day.
It’s wet. Alone, I walk along the flooded oak planks that line the way around the lakeshore perimeter. The once frozen mud underneath my feet turned to slosh after the morning sun had gleamed over the boardwalks. There was no winter this year. The midwest experienced temps too high to sustain any possible ice climbing. Earlier when I had attended the Michigan Ice Fest, I delegated my time to mixed climbing in Marquette as most others turned to drinking in amber-lit oak-laden bars. But for why was I here in March? A cold spell, and long enough to possibly give me the natural ice I craved. As I approached a suitable climb and began to set up a rap line to TRS, a block detached and hurled itself into the sand below. To ask this winter for a stable ice climb was idiotic so I had to accept the risks and rapped down to climb.
2024 had been the hottest year in recorded history. 2023 was reported to be unusually hot as well. Californian wildfires, hurricanes, floods, obtuse heatwaves, and drought seemed to plague the news surrounding that time. Like most outcomes, this was possible from many factors including the onset El Nino pattern, ongoing carbon/greenhouse emissions, and changing cloud coverages. While there are much more serious considerations to talk about considering climate change other than it’s effects on ice climbing (I have already prewritten articles about PTFE’s and product design), with the again United States withdrawal of the 2016 Paris Agreement I feel like I can say a bit about the state and future of ice climbing in the midwest
To start, it will get hotter. The winter’s will get shorter. The conditions more unbalanced and the consequences harsher. This is a truth that needs to be accepted and to feign its occurrence is ignorant.
The previous two ice climbing seasons in the midwest proved either short or pathetic and warm. Ice fests were cancelled and climbing cut short. This was especially interesting because the midwest’s ice climbing scene is unique in boasting 4 farmed ice parks where water is pumped onto cliffsides then naturally freeze and form proper climbs for the community. Given the flat geography, there is barely much alpine ice to be found and actual waterfall ice that is above WI-3 is really only found in the Upper Peninsula which is unequivocally the ice climbing mecca of the Midwest. These ice parks prove to be very popular with the scene over here and when climbs are in, they are used every day by residents and tourists around. These ice parks typically have a dedicated Ice festival where the local towns economy is boosted by these events from travelling midwesterners fiending for some easy access ice. Despite the niche medium, these ice parks remain extremely popular with the entire local climbing scene so it's no surprise the idea to pitch up an ice park over in southside Chicago was mentioned to me by a member of the Chicago Parks district. Ironically enough, this project probably won’t be instated due to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker approving construction of a DARPA backed quantum computing facility next to the concrete walls that the Chicago Parks District planned on using for their proposed ice park. Ironic because both projects would be at fault for using an excessive amount of resources in order to run these things properly. To build an ice park requires an excessive amount of water that typically will erode the surrounding rock foundation quickly from deep freeze-thaw cycles, not to mention wasted water from an inconsistent winter freezing. And while the climbs formed in these ice parks are pretty spectacular, they are ultimately unnatural and manufactured. The awe and beauty of ice climbing is in its nature of the medium itself, finite and everchanging. Flows fat and heavy one year, thin and smeary the next. Glistening and virgin in the early season and opaque, picked, and prodded just a month after. So why couldn't we just enjoy the fantastic ice climbing offered in the UP and northern Minnesota?
Well we have actually lost quite a bit of natural ice climbing in the midwest over the years. In episode 297 of the Enormocast, host Chris Kalous interviewed local midwest legend Paul Kuenn, besides being an avid all–round climber and helping create the AMGA, he put up some of the hardest Midwestern waterfall ice routes in the 70's and 80's. In the interview, PK made a gleamed over comment that in the early 80's the lakeshore would freeze together forming these long continuous banks of ice that he would be able to traverse horizontally. Climbing in the UP made me privy to the notion that this was definitely not the case for the current state of the lakeshore climbs these years. Curious about this story, I had bumped into PK after he gave a slideshow at the Sandstone Ice Festival and asked him about some more details. He confirmed that this was the case and cites that after the 1988 North American droughts the lakeshore ice density declined and became the individual spills that we climb today. He shared stories of pitch after pitch of horizontal ice climbing, something hard to believe ever existed today. He had directed me to talk to Bill Thompson who has been organizing the Michigan Ice Fest for its 30-something years. Bill told me similar stories but had no real concrete idea of why the change in the lakeshore formations.
With the persistent climate neglect attitude from governing bodies, I don’t have much hope that there will be impactful change in how the United States operates and treats global warming. Everytime throughout history we are reminded that big change generally comes through social change from the bottom to the top. Through grassroutes organization and a unified proletariat is where climate correction is possible, but currently with how information channels are ran, and how the modern american is raped by a culture of consumerism and convenience, I feel that change is still very distant. As the ice melts and artificial ice parks begin to crop up around the US, ice climbers flee further north,outdoor mimicry experiences open doors, parks close and gyms open, that maybe a new generation of luddites reject the unnatural and begin the change to restore