Ice climbing takes many forms but, unsurprisingly, the basic principle is to ascend some form of frozen water using ice axes and crampons. This may be compacted ice on an alpine North face, very compacted ice on glaciers or frozen, near vertical, waterfalls and water seepages from cliff sides. The pictures below are taken from two of the latter type in the European Alps. There are more photos of icefalls taken in Europe, the Canadian Rockies and New England, together with descriptions of the routes, accessible from the link at the top.
There are some excellent sites for ice climbing information, a few of which are below.
I have to start this with a link to pictures and description of Sea of vapours, on the Terminator Area, Mount Rundle in the Canadian rockies, for obvious reasons! There are also photos of The Replicant and The Terminator on this link.
Cold Climbs UK is an excellent UK-based site with a fair bit of information on getting started, photographs of UK routes and some useful links.
Gimmi Ratto has a site dedicated to Ice Climbing in the Western European Alps, that being where I've done most of my climbing, albeit with occasional forays to Canada, New England and Scotland. There's an awful lot of really good information on Gimmi's site and a wealth of pictures, an example being the image on the right below. The routes shown here are a couple of those I've climbed in that area. I was hoping to try somewhere new by going to one of Nepal, Transylvania, Norway or Alaska recently but unfortunately this has fallen through somewhat due to timing problems. Oh well, next year's season beckons!
The photo to the left is of 'Symphonie d'Automne', Alpe-d'Huez, France and is © Quang-Tuan Luong from his Mountain Gallery, a great site for all sorts of information on routes and equipment as well as having a great many onward links. See particularly the Cold Mountain page for ice techniques.
On the right is a distant shot of 'La croupe de la poufiasse', La Grave, France. You can just see a climber in the centre of the picture (particularly if you enlarge it!).
The Ouray Ice Park in Colorado is an unusual climbing area in that it's been created by making holes in a water pipe above a cliff to produce the ice falls.
If you're thinking of climbing icefalls in the Canadian Rockies then you're going to need Joe Josephson's guide book "Waterfall Ice, Climbs in the Canadian Rockies". Joe is one of the leading ice climbers in the area and the guide covers the full range of grades. The link is to an online subset of the book with additions from other local climbers. It's well worth a look.
To check out current conditions on Ben Nevis or Aonach Mor before heading out, and to monitor the weather there hour by hour, you could have a look at the NevisCAM. The site has regularly updated pictures from cameras pointed at the Ben and Aonach Mor; less entertaining at night of course but handy for confirming that the current weather is as unpleasant as expected!
Somewhat more important than a quick look at the Ben on camera is a check on current snow conditions using the Scottish Avalanche Information Service.
For the truly optimistic, there's a web cam, set up by Swowdon Gliders, showing weather in Snowdonia, including the summit of Snowdon. As well as the images there are pages of current, and very detailed, weather data. It has been known to be icy up there recently, Winter 2003 / 2004; just not with any great frequency or longevity!
The web site of the British Mountain Guides is a good place to start if you're thinking of taking up ice climbing.
There are more climbing links on my mountaineering pages.
