These were photographed from 12-8-2010 thru 12-15-2010
Enjoy the shots and Merry Christmas!
Note:
Do not try this at home,unless you have a 100 foot waterfall in your back yard!
Start by binding 2 steel cables, a doubled climbing rope and a static rope all together with sections of copper wire. The length of at least one of the strands of the rig should be as tall as the falls you are going to freeze so that you can anchor it down. Roger is standing about 90 feet away from me.
Next, being VERY CAREFUL, have your buddy toss the mess over the cliff but only after you have anchored it to a very large tree, or in our case three trees.
NOTE: Skipping this step will totally screw up your plan, so be sure to anchor this thing to something big.
Steel cable attached to two trees with the static rope to a third tree.
Pictured here is the classic Hillbilly triplex twist around knot. The type of knots used really don't matter seeing how none of them will ever come apart. Any type of B.F.K. should work just fine.
Once everything is in place at the top of the waterfall, proceed to the lower side to make sure the rope is where you want it to be. Notice the large area of ice forming at the base of the waterfall. This is an area where you really shouldn't go. If falling ice doesn't ruin your day, busting your ass and sliding down the ice covered gulley will!!
Use sticks or branches to re-position the rope if needed. The best time to set this up is before the ice starts to form.
This is day 5.
Here in these two photographs the column is starting to form. It's about 4 inches thick and frozen almost all the way up. I used this tree as well as an anchored tripod having Roger stand in the same place as a control for the photographs so I could shoot the same composition each time we came out to check the progress. I have to admit I was getting pretty excited to see this, having success last year but not getting the chance to photograph anything because the single rope broke under the weight of the ice before I could get out with my camera.
Ta-freakin'-da!!
The column is about a foot across most of the way and finally froze all the way to the top. This formation took place over about 16 hours with the air temps in the single digits, and only a few hours after I took these photographs, the air temp rose enough for all of the ice to fall off. The constant flow of water doesn't help any either. You can easily see the flow of water coming off the top of the falls. A little bit of water is needed for sure, but too much and the ice will not form with the warm temperatures we have in the Red.
The other side. Right near the top of the frame you can see where the column is starting to fail. Just to the right of the column at the base of the cliff is my tripod.
My next experiment will be attempting to make a 100 foot tall Christmas Tree out of ice. By adding retired climbing ropes that you people will donate, (HINT), I believe that I can accomplish this and who knows, if this works, we might get to do some ice climbing in the Red after all. if not, at least I had the chance to create something cool and unique.
I thought this looked like The Predator a little bit that had an elephant for a dad. The reason it formed this way was because as the column formed, the base failed and the column leaned but the rope supported the rest of the ice.
