How to Ice Climb With Pro Will Gadd

Will Gadd is one of the world’s best-known ice and mixed climbers, thanks to his stoke and history of new routes across Canada and around the world. In this video series, Gadd gives tips on how to improve and stay safe.

Footwork

What is an “industrial standard” foot placement in ice climbing? Answer: Frontpoints and secondary points both in the ice and solid. 90 percent of ice climbers don’t do this, and the results range from being out of balance and pumped to falling off. Fix it! Here’s how.

Tool Work

Knowing how to swing an ice tool is important, but knowing where to swing it is equally important.

Steep Ice

Ice climbing should feel fluid, relaxed, fun and like it would take a small earthquake to knock you off. Here’s how to move well on steep ice. Any fool can climb ice poorly, but learning some solid principles and actually climbing ice with a reasonable safety margin takes some knowledge. Principles for movement learned after climbing ice poorly for 15 years, and better for the last 20+

Drytooling 101

How do you tell if your tools are on a good feature or not? There are tests for that! Tricks of the dry winter trade that will help anyone get improve.

Advanced Drytooling

Tricks of the winter drytooling trade! Scratching and sniffing to success, or not.

Ice Screws

Where and how to place ice screws. Tricks, tips, and how screws fail so that doesn’t happen to you.

Ice Bulges

Ice bulges maybe cause more falls than any other feature. The ice sucks where it rolls back, you can’t see your feet, and people tend to rush it. Here’s how to pull an ice bulge with if not style at least minimal fish flopping.

Threads

Ice V threads seem sketchy, but they are truck anchors if done well. Here’s how to get good threads, and evaluate those you find.

Sharpening

Sharp picks matter, but most people screw up sharpening them. Here’s how to do it right!