This Ice Climber Took a Whipper, Watch It and Hear His Suggestions

Henrik Overballe took his first ice climbing fall on a trip to Hemsedal, Norway, last winter. “That was a scary experience,” he said.

In this video, we get helmet cam footage of the fall and what led up to it. Overballe walks us through what happened and what he could’ve done differently. “We were ice climbing a single pitch WI5 where we had to top-out above a small overhang and bridge a hanging pillar,” he said. “The finishing move was to basically pull yourself up.”

In the video, we see another set of ice tools at the top, those were left after the previous climber also took a whipper. “First of all, if I couldn’t find a decent rest, then I should have rested on the last ice screw, or clipped one of my ice axes and then rested,” he said. “Secondly, I was so close to topping out at the that I probably should’ve hooked the tree… I guess I was a bit too eager to finish the route, and what I learned was that I should take rests seriously when climbing steep ice.”

Ice Climbing Whipper and Thoughts