RRC Archives

I attempted this last year at Land of the Arches campground and had some un documented success, so this time I photographed every step.
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.

This is why we love you Eric........

it should grow really fast now that there's a good base. this is exciting, keep us up to date.

"Next, being VERY CAREFUL, have your buddy toss the mess over the cliff"

lol

Thanks guys!
I was very happy to see some success this time.
We are going to have to have several days of single digit or colder air tempatures before there will be even a chance on getting even close with this one, but I have my eye on several other flows including one that is as tall as the one here, but attached to the wall. As of yesterday, Christmas eve, it was only about 20 feet down.
I will let folks know if I see anything forming, but what I'm starting to believe is you had better be here with your crampons on and axes in hand waiting for the few hour window that you might have to climb any ice in the Red. Who knows though? Winter has only just begun. We still have a few months of freezing cold, nasty, dark, wet, wonderful weather to look forward to.

Nice work - but I think you will have more luck if you find a water flow where there is rock behind it to attach to. A 100 ft free standing pillar can be a death trap...

michaelarmand wrote:Nice work - but I think you will have more luck if you find a water flow where there is rock behind it to attach to. A 100 ft free standing pillar can be a death trap...

I couldn't agree with you more. I wouldn't get within 50 feet of this thing unless it was at least several feet thick all the way to the top. I did this mainly just to see if I could achive the same results as I did last year and also to inspire a little Ice Farming. If we can set up a bunch of these where the conditions are better, there might be some good ice through out the winter. Unless we get a couple of weeks of real cold tempatures I think this might be the most I can do at this location. This falls gets a good amount of sunlight and so far by the afternoon of each good morning, all of the ice had fallen.

Redirecting water where you can control the flow might help as well.

nice. I always had wondered if that would work. Where is that rock house? Think it might work at Torrent?

Saxman wrote:Redirecting water where you can control the flow might help as well.

There is a choke point about 40 feet from the edge that I can dam. If the water continues to flow at the rate that it is now, I'll do that.

the lurkist wrote:nice. I always had wondered if that would work. Where is that rock house? Think it might work at Torrent?

,
I heard that many years ago it did work at Torrent but no one used a rope. The falls just froze solid.
I asked Dr. Bob a few years ago about doing this at there. I think he was a little worried about the thing falling over and knocking down everything in the ravine. Torrent is taller than this one by over 50 feet.
I set this up at Land of the Arches Campground. There isn't anything around it. I kinda' doubt the ice here would ever get large enough to climb. I don't know the first thing about reading ice, but at 100 feet tall, it would seem like it sould have to be at least several feet thick to be solid enough to get on. Next fall, we should locate some climb-able flows and farm some ice. All of my rigging isn't going anywhere for a few months. but I would love to try this somewhere else. I've started collecting old climbing ropes.