Ice Screw Removal Done Right | Ice Climbing

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Some of the videos we make are pretty advanced. Some of them, like this one, are tailored for beginners. Climbers new to ice are the ones who will truly get the most out of one of these “fundamentals”-type videos. If you’ve been ice climbing for a few years, you probably know how to remove a screw in an efficient way that both conserves your energy and reduces the risk of dropping gear.

Of course, there are far fewer ice climbers than there are rock climbers. That’s a reality of both interest and geography/climate. So, it’s a subset of a subset of the audience that is being catered to. I accept that from there is likely to be reduced viewership.

From a purely “business” perspective, this may seem like a bad idea. But, this isn’t a business. Well, it actually is a business only in so far as I need a way to process the little ad revenue we get to offset the costs of the editing software and recording equipment and all of that. And offset is the best it has been, covering some of the costs but never putting me into a positive cash flow, let alone pay myself.

That isn’t why I do it, though. I do it as a semi-public service, and I do it because I love to talk about climbing. So, yes, I am getting something out of it, just not money. But mostly I am just trying to give back to a community that has given me so many friendships and experiences and memories and stories. So, in that sense, I don’t care if the audience for this video is small. If it helps a few climbers climber slightly safer or with slightly more enjoyment, then it was worth it.

But I do think there is also some benefit for us in the old guard who “have this stuff down” to be reminded of the fundamentals, from time to time. It’s not unusual for me to check in on myself and find that I’ve developed a bad habit regarding some climbing system or technique from time to time. For instance, just the other day, I had to remind myself about to really clear enough space for a good ice tool swing by getting my shoulders back from the wall. I could get my hips a little closer. I could get a little more arch in my back. It wasn’t that I was doing something fundamentally unsafe, it was just that I had let some entropy set in, and it happened to show up in this need for some minor body positioning adjustments.

There’s a reason professional athletes work on the fundamentals so much, even though they are experts at the fundamentals, and the story above illustrates why. We can’t stay hyper vigilant about everything all of the time. So, mindfulness and intention becomes the remedy, adding in that vigilance to a specific focus for a specific period of time.

Every once in a while, being reminded of “the way we were taught” to do something, if we are open to the self-reflection that invites, may prompt us into one of the durations of vigilance about something that - maybe we aren’t doing wrong, but- could do better.