Once reserved for winter, mixed climbing — a combination of rock and ice climbing — has evolved to completely dry climbing in summer, or dry tooling. The discipline was born from routes that were a combination of bare rock ascended to reach a hanging icefall, but it’s now a genre unto itself, complete with specialized gear. It’s a Saturday in August in the Rigid Designator Amphitheater, above Vail, Colorado. While the nearby crags — namely Rifle, one of America’s most famous sport climbing areas — are packed with muscular men and women lining up for their turn on a thuggish, delicate route, we have the walls mostly to ourselves. The reason for the solitude is that the Designator Amphitheater is most often used for ice climbing, but during summer, the ice typically has all melted out. In the peak of winter, this area draws visitors from all over for the world, as it’s home to some of the coolest icefalls in the country.
David Roetzel working out the moves on Saphira (M15-), the hardest mixed route in North America. Photo: Courtesy of Chris Van Leuven But the Amphitheater is also a heavily bolted area and contains the most difficult mixed route in the country, Saphira, rated M15- (approximately 5.13+ on the Yosemite Decimal System; the “M” is for “mixed”). Dry tooling is rated on a D series, and it’s what David Roetzel, Beth Goralski and I were doing that day. Roetzel worked out the moves on Saphira while Goralski climbed routes in the M10 (5.12) range. Dressed in board shorts instead of insulated winter gear, we were using ice axes and crampons over bare rock for upward progress.
The tools of the trade. Photo: Courtesy of Chris Van Leuven The trouble (and excitement) with dry tooling is that due to the amplified force of sharp ice picks levering off fragile edges, rock can unexpectedly snap. Other times tools skate, sending the climber flying through the air. It feels like scary sport climbing. Sometimes crampons scratching over soft limestone sound like a butter knife on a porcelain plate; other times they sound like nails on a chalkboard. And then there’s the crunch when they set firmly on an edge. Following Roetzel and Goralski’s explicit instructions, and after several top-rope burns, I succeed on my first and second dry lead climbs, Cupcake Corner (M6/5.10) and the first rope length of Amphibian (M8/5.11). For 20 minutes on Amphibian, I pried and pulled on cracks and small edges with my ice tools while smearing my shoes on the rock. At times I was fearful a tool would rip from the rock and smack me square in the jaw. It was the most adrenaline-pumping, surreal climbing experience I’d had in years. I couldn’t wait to go up and try again. Dry tooling may be climbing’s most obscure niche, but it’s a helluva lot of fun.
The author starting up Amphibian with Roetzel tending to the belay. Photo: Courtesy of Beth Goralski Roetzel started summer dry tooling in the early 2000s, during rainy days when the other nearby rocks were wet but the steeps in the Designator Amphitheatre were dry. Goralski started mixed climbing and dry tooling in 2012 when she moved from Portland, Oregon, to Ouray, Colorado — home of the annual Ouray Ice Festival, where she took first place in women’s speed climbing in 2016. She began frequenting the local crag Hall of Justice. “I was like, ‘This is a hoot,’” she says. “It’s also scary,” she adds. “You have these sharp things all over the place. When I first touched ice tools to rock, it felt totally bizarre. You have this big handle, but you’re liable to pop off unexpectedly.” In 2014, Goralski was belaying climber Marc Beverly in the Hall of Justice when something surprising happened. She recalls, “He fell at the top and his tool went all the way through his helmet. While I was lowering him, he was moving his head around and his tool was moving around. It was very medieval.”
Marc Beverly is all smiles with an ice pick nearly stuck in his skull. Photo: Courtesy of Jason Nelson Back in 1994, visionary climber Jeff Lowe invented the sport of mixed climbing at the Designator Amphitheater when he established the route Octopussy, which ascends the wall for 90 feet and climbs out of a 15-foot roof of pocketed stone to reach a hanging curtain of ice. The route graces the cover of Lowe’s book “Ice World: Techniques and Experiences of Modern Ice Climbing.” This August, 23 years after Lowe established that initial route, Canadian Gord McArthur completed his longstanding project Storm Giant, rated D16, which ascends 80 meters (263 feet) of steep cave climbing in British Columbia. It’s “upside-down, gymnastic climbing that [went] on forever,” he told Hayden Carpenter at Rock and Ice Magazine. Ever since attending the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA) World Cup in Bozeman, Montana, last year, and watching Russian champions Maria Tolokonina and Maxim Tomilov, I’ve wanted to try it. (Mixed climbing and dry tooling is huge in Russia.)
To Goralski and Roetzel, summer dry tooling isn’t an end-all. It’s also a way for them to keep sharp and ready for winter, and to have fun. “Most of the time when you’re dry tooling in winter, you’re in shade,” Goralski says. “It’s nice when it’s not balls cold out.” Read more about climbing from ASN
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Once reserved for winter, mixed climbing — a combination of rock and ice climbing — has evolved to completely dry climbing in summer, or dry tooling. The discipline was born from routes that were a combination of bare rock ascended to reach a hanging icefall, but it’s now a genre unto itself, complete with specialized gear.
It’s a Saturday in August in the Rigid Designator Amphitheater, above Vail, Colorado. While the nearby crags — namely Rifle, one of America’s most famous sport climbing areas — are packed with muscular men and women lining up for their turn on a thuggish, delicate route, we have the walls mostly to ourselves.
The reason for the solitude is that the Designator Amphitheater is most often used for ice climbing, but during summer, the ice typically has all melted out. In the peak of winter, this area draws visitors from all over for the world, as it’s home to some of the coolest icefalls in the country.
But the Amphitheater is also a heavily bolted area and contains the most difficult mixed route in the country, Saphira, rated M15- (approximately 5.13+ on the Yosemite Decimal System; the “M” is for “mixed”). Dry tooling is rated on a D series, and it’s what David Roetzel, Beth Goralski and I were doing that day.
Roetzel worked out the moves on Saphira while Goralski climbed routes in the M10 (5.12) range. Dressed in board shorts instead of insulated winter gear, we were using ice axes and crampons over bare rock for upward progress.
The trouble (and excitement) with dry tooling is that due to the amplified force of sharp ice picks levering off fragile edges, rock can unexpectedly snap. Other times tools skate, sending the climber flying through the air. It feels like scary sport climbing.
Sometimes crampons scratching over soft limestone sound like a butter knife on a porcelain plate; other times they sound like nails on a chalkboard. And then there’s the crunch when they set firmly on an edge.
Following Roetzel and Goralski’s explicit instructions, and after several top-rope burns, I succeed on my first and second dry lead climbs, Cupcake Corner (M6/5.10) and the first rope length of Amphibian (M8/5.11). For 20 minutes on Amphibian, I pried and pulled on cracks and small edges with my ice tools while smearing my shoes on the rock. At times I was fearful a tool would rip from the rock and smack me square in the jaw.
It was the most adrenaline-pumping, surreal climbing experience I’d had in years. I couldn’t wait to go up and try again. Dry tooling may be climbing’s most obscure niche, but it’s a helluva lot of fun.
Roetzel started summer dry tooling in the early 2000s, during rainy days when the other nearby rocks were wet but the steeps in the Designator Amphitheatre were dry.
Goralski started mixed climbing and dry tooling in 2012 when she moved from Portland, Oregon, to Ouray, Colorado — home of the annual Ouray Ice Festival, where she took first place in women’s speed climbing in 2016. She began frequenting the local crag Hall of Justice. “I was like, ‘This is a hoot,’” she says.
“It’s also scary,” she adds. “You have these sharp things all over the place. When I first touched ice tools to rock, it felt totally bizarre. You have this big handle, but you’re liable to pop off unexpectedly.”
In 2014, Goralski was belaying climber Marc Beverly in the Hall of Justice when something surprising happened. She recalls, “He fell at the top and his tool went all the way through his helmet. While I was lowering him, he was moving his head around and his tool was moving around. It was very medieval.”
Back in 1994, visionary climber Jeff Lowe invented the sport of mixed climbing at the Designator Amphitheater when he established the route Octopussy, which ascends the wall for 90 feet and climbs out of a 15-foot roof of pocketed stone to reach a hanging curtain of ice. The route graces the cover of Lowe’s book “Ice World: Techniques and Experiences of Modern Ice Climbing.”
This August, 23 years after Lowe established that initial route, Canadian Gord McArthur completed his longstanding project Storm Giant, rated D16, which ascends 80 meters (263 feet) of steep cave climbing in British Columbia. It’s “upside-down, gymnastic climbing that [went] on forever,” he told Hayden Carpenter at Rock and Ice Magazine.
Ever since attending the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA) World Cup in Bozeman, Montana, last year, and watching Russian champions Maria Tolokonina and Maxim Tomilov, I’ve wanted to try it. (Mixed climbing and dry tooling is huge in Russia.)
To Goralski and Roetzel, summer dry tooling isn’t an end-all. It’s also a way for them to keep sharp and ready for winter, and to have fun. “Most of the time when you’re dry tooling in winter, you’re in shade,” Goralski says. “It’s nice when it’s not balls cold out.”
Read more about climbing from ASN
For access to exclusive gear videos, celebrity interviews, and more, subscribe on YouTube!
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