Since the second pitch was supposed to be the crux and I was still quite the novice climber, I would lead the first pitch leaving the second to Mike. I geared up and started up the face, sinking my tools and crampons into the ice. This was only my third lead and it felt like a Water Ice 3/3+ rating, a good level for me with just enough of a challenge. I stopped at good resting places and placed screws at decent intervals without too much trouble. Now from the bottom it looks like the first pitch ends on a big ledge with a fixed anchor, and it does if you’re climbing where the other guys are. And they weren’t even using it because they were linking the first two pitches with a 70-meter rope. On my side there wasn’t much to offer in the way of places to stand. Every small ledge ahead of me looked like a better stance so I continued climbing until I realized it wasn’t going to get any better. I found a slightly indented spot and proceeded to chop and kick out a tiny ledge where I could stand as comfortably as possible. Then it was time to build a belay. I placed three screws into the ice, attached myself to one, ran a sling through all three, and attached the belay device to the sling so that the tension was equalized on all three screws. It was now time to bring Mike up.

The first thing to do was bring up the excess rope before putting him on belay. Rope management can be difficult enough with one rope, but it’s recommended to use two ropes for ice climbing and we had just purchased a couple, which were very prone to tangling because they were still so new. I was able to divide the ropes into two piles looped over my daisy chain and then clip them into the belay device. I called down to Mike to let him know he could start climbing. Now came the hard part: feeding the ropes through the belay device as Mike made his way up, always keeping one hand on the ropes in case of a fall, and still dividing them into separate piles, all while leaning back from the wall of ice trusting my life to the daisy chain and the ice screw to which it was attached.

When Mike reached me, there wasn’t much space for him but that didn’t matter because he wasn’t going to stay long. He had to keep going and lead the second pitch. I confessed to him there that I had forgotten the V-thread tool, an important piece of equipment for building rappel anchors so we could get back down. He was already perturbed that I had forgotten eye protection and we had a bit of a heated argument there on the wall. I wasn’t too concerned about the tool since the Weeping Wall is so popular and there were probably plenty of anchors already set up to rappel from. And the truth is that I had lost my sunglasses and didn’t want to wear my snowboard goggles because of the limited vision. I just planned not to look up. I learned my lesson soon enough, though.

After transferring the rest of the gear to Michael, he started up the pitch maneuvering around me as delicately as possible. It was pretty much dead vertical right off the bat but he managed to get a couple screws placed from what looked like very uncomfortable positions. After about twenty or thirty feet he disappeared over a lip and then it was just the occasional yell of “Ice!” as he knocked chunks loose. I made the stupid mistake of looking up when all seemed fine and got hit by a tiny piece of ice right below my right eye. It was a very small chunk, but after it has fallen all that way, it stings a lot when it hits. As I saw when we got back to the truck, it also made a small gash that left a short trickle of blood down my face. Not long after that, the amount of ice raining down increased significantly. I was looking down trying to keep the ropes organized and even though I was up against the wall, I got a blow to the back of my head by a baseball sized piece of ice. It was so well centered on my spine, and hurt so much, I actually checked to make sure I could move all my limbs. If it had been any bigger, it might have snapped my neck. From then on, any time I heard "Ice!," I hugged the wall with my helmet pointed up and covered my neck with my free hand. After a while the bombardment ceased and Mike soon yelled down that he was off belay. I broke down my anchor and waited for the go-ahead to start climbing.

When I got the "On belay," I removed the last screw holding me in and started climbing. I was definitely vertical and there wasn’t really any place to rest. I was impressed with Mike’s lead and it was difficult enough to remove the screws with the security of a top rope, so it had to be a chore placing them on lead. After the vertical section, it eased off a little and I finished the pitch and found Mike in an almost worse belay spot with a mess of rope around his neck. His rope management skills looked like they needed a little work. He had been courteous enough to chop out a small step for my foot and with a little more chopping I had a decent spot for a short rest.

The third pitch was theoretically easier than the last one but that didn’t exactly turn out to be the case. I started out on lead and only got about ten feet before Mike ran into trouble with the ropes. I had to wait in a semi-crouched position while he untangled enough to let me get a little farther. I put a screw in as soon as possible and gave Mike a chance to dole out some more slack for my future use. I wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to keep up and he warned me that I might have to wait, but he managed to stay on top of it...barely.

I went ahead with my pitch, which was getting harder by the step. The ice quality was poor because the previous days had been sunny, melting the ice, which then refroze creating a layer of fragile, chandeliered ice. Every swing of the axe sent cracks splintering in all directions and the next swing, as I tried to get a better placement, shattered the ice, which all fell away. It was usually the third swing into the good ice below that resulted in a solid “thunk,” which meant the point of the axe had sunk in. This was repeated for almost every step of the way. Mike didn’t seem too happy about the constant barrage of ice, but he’d soon realize there was nothing I could do.

And as if climbing wasn’t scary enough, I still had to place protection. The irony of protection on ice is that it is usually most needed where it is most difficult to place. Placing a screw can be the pumpiest, scariest, and most dangerous part of climbing, which is why a lot of people tend to climb a long way before placing one. I had climbed far enough and it was time to place a screw, but I was still on vertical, bad ice. I really had no choice, though, so this is how a screw placement goes: I dug the front points of my crampons into the ice and then made a solid tool placement with my left hand. The placement of that axe is the most important part, because if it pops, your weight pulls you away from the wall, your crampons slide right out and down you go. With my right hand I chopped away the bad ice, which seemed to go on forever, until I had a clear spot for the screw. I then sunk my right axed into the ice above, took my hand out from the leash, and unclipped a screw from my harness. By this time my calves were burning from holding myself up on the front points and my left hand was going cold and numb because it was high above my heart and the leash was cutting of the circulation. I took the screw and put the tip into the small starter hole I had made, being very careful not to drop it as I did all of this one-handed. Once the first few threads bit, I was able to let go and flip the little lever for faster turning. Unfortunately it went in way too easily, which meant air pockets and that I had to start all over again in another spot. Great! So after repeating almost the whole process, I got the screw into some better ice. It’s not over yet, though. I still had to unclip a screamer (a load-reducer) from my harness, clip it into the screamer, all with my nimble thick-gloved hand. Done. Yay! Let’s do this again in ten meters. Actually, I wanted to get on in sooner because I didn’t like the feel of the ice for the last screw. Even with the dual dynamic ropes, load-reducing screamer, and 10” long ice screw, who knows if the ice will hold in the event of a fall. Luckily, the rest of the screw placements weren’t as bad as that one.

This pitch was turning out to be well above my skill level and it was a long pitch. The guys we met below seemed impressed that we were climbing grade 4 our first season and even said, "We’ve got a couple young heroes here." One of the guys had even turned back from the second pitch the previous season because he wasn’t ready for it. And here I was trying not to think about the fact that I was hundreds of feet up on a wall of ice, climbing something that was probably WI 5 due to ice conditions, and I had nowhere to go except up. Somehow I managed to keep going and finish my pitch, reaching a very large ledge. I had never been so happy to reach a ledge.

I set up an anchor and brought Mike up. His first words were "Awesome lead." I’m glad it wasn’t just my imagination on how difficult it was. We took a short break, ate an energy bar, drank from the stream running along the ledge, and got ready for the final pitch, which looked like it was going to be quite a bit easier. I was glad Mike was leading because I was ready for the intensity to be done. He finished the climb without any trouble and I followed with only a couple minor incidences where I had to take a different line than Mike because of where the rope was going, which turned out to be a bit interesting. But I made it. We were done. Well, actually, we were only halfway done. We still had to get down.

We hiked over to a route called Sniveling Gully and found the first tree to rappel from, already set up with rappel anchors. It took three rappels to get down and each one was a pain in the ass because every time we threw the ropes, they would get tangled and knot up halfway down. The descent took a lot longer than it should have, but we made it. We reached the truck ten hours after we had started, not exactly a record time, but it could have been worse. We drove back to the hostel to return a lost axe another climber had asked us to retrieve at one of the rappel stations, stopped in Lake Louise for a huge steak dinner, and then drove home.