AXES AND CRAMPONS...

These are your life support machines, enabling you to climb faster and harder. Losing one of either can cause real problems.

Axes.

If you are mainly going to be snow plodding, you will only need a single axe. However, when your route requires you to climb something you will require a pair of ice axes. Ice axes usually come either as a hammer or as an adze. The hammer is for driving in pitons, bashing in nuts and perhaps hammering in your ice axe. The adze is to chop ledges, dig emergency snow holes, cut trenches for ice axe belays and to leave nice curvy cuts in your forehead.

Leashes; These little fellows tie you to your ice axes. This can be handy when tired on difficult routes or when you accidentally drop your tools. They do, unfortunately, slow you down, and can be a real pain when putting in ice screws and setting up belays.

Climbing leashless requires a bit of experience, as dropping a tool on a route can have serious consequences but can obviously speed you up.

Leash alternative; A good alternative to climbing leashless, is to attach the axes via elastic to your waist. That way the do not get in the way when putting in an ice screw but cannot be dropped. Grivel make a double spring leash at a rather expensive £29.

There are a number of good axes out there and a lot of people have different opinions, often based on which axes they chose, with people vigorously defending their axe without trying any others. On this site I will simply give three axes which are suitable for climbing to very high levels. They can all be used leash less or leashed.

These are DMM Xeno, a very tough no-nonsense tool. Others being Black Diamond Viper and Charlet Moser Quark.

Crampons

There are different sorts of crampons available, however to make it easier for us the clever crampon people have created a rating system. This effectively grades the cramp on to the uses that it will excel in. Lack of originality in the naming of the ratings gives rise to 3 types:

• C1. These are basically designed for walking and trekking, or any other non technical pursuits. They will generally have about 8 to 10 points on the crampon. They are lightweight as they are non articulated, this is very very good at saving you energy, which you will be eternally grateful at high altitude (i.e. 4000 meters plus). The front points are not aggressive at all, which means walking is easier. Also it means when tired after walking long a ridge all day, when your walking is clumsy, when you kick your calves it wont hurt as much as more aggressive points. The major downfall in C1s is that they limit what you can do, you could not really climb a steep ice wall (an unexpected climb) so you have to be confident you will not stray from the path making them unsuitable for winter alpine climbing.

• C2. The major difference is that they are articulated, stronger and have more aggressive front points. The C2 is really seen as an ‘all-rounder’ crampon. They can cope with long walk ins, again being relativity light and they can climb grade 6 ice. Being articulated and stronger, they will last for a few seasons (as long as you don’t let them go rusty and neglect them) but the major downfall is that the front points are non replaceable.

• C3. These are fully ridged technical crampons, designed to take you up very steep ice. As they are fully ridged they give no vibrations when kicking into the hardest of all ice making them efficient on long ice climbs. They can be tricky to walk in as the front points are large. They catch in the snow and trip you up, you can rip the back of your leg to pieces if you’re a bit of a clumsy walker….this will hurt you and your lovely salopettes.
Examples; Grivel Rambo

Make sure your crampons fit your boots. For footwear advice click here.

Grivel G12, Charlet Moser Vasak are ideal for most mountaineering however rigid crampons are more efficient if climbing several hundred meters of solid ice. Less energy is absorbed by ridged crampons meaning that more energy goes in to sticking the points in to the ice.

Charlet Moser Lever Lock M10 is a semi ridged crampon which can be mono or bi pointed. Not tried by anyone at thehardseason, but they look interesting.

DMM Terminator and Grivel Rambo are good rigid crampons and can be both mono or bi pointed. The terminator also has a way to add a heel spur.

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