What's on your Ice Rack?

[mattdrayer]

Obviously the rack will depend on the route, but generally speaking what gear do you carry on your rack? How do you rack your gear? Are you bristling with ice clippers? Do you carry it all on a Metolius Gear Sling? What's essential to you? What's extra?

[johngassel]

My rack varies a ton depending on the season. Early season I’ll carry almost all 13’s with a few 10’s, a specter, pine etc. as the ice fattens I tend to more carry more 16’s.

I usually bring 12 screws with me but I don’t always carry that many with me on every pitch. I will bring a few more on pure steep ice with ice scre belays (the lake for example).

Draws are racked on my harness directly with screws on ice clippers (4 of them). I don’t use many alpine draws, most sport draws and screamers.

[mattdrayer]

Cool, yeah I have a bunch of screws to select from as well. Last season I was mostly alpine-focused with 16cm screws but have picked up more 13cm screws -- I think I have six of each right now. I have a single 22cm + Grivel Candela tool for setting up v-threads. I also carried two 19cm screws last season and used them primarily for the belay anchors on multi-pitch climbs. I have one 10cm and am considering picking up a couple more because why not

For draws I am currently all BD Oz Alpine Draws plus a Yates screamer to use for first placements. I am thinking about blending in some quickdraws for waterfall climbing since it doesn't really make sense to have more than a couple alpine draws on a single-pitch vertical route.

Other than that it's a couple pieces of cord, two rap rings, a cordelette set up as a quad/equalette, Reverso, PAS. Looking at ways to cut it back, I've been thinking about trying the "mini-quad" to see how it goes -- would be able to eliminate the full equalette with that and possibly the PAS as well.

Matt

[JohnChan]

like everyone else, it depends.

i have 17 screws total. one 22 for v-threads. 5 or so 17's, 2 stubbies and mostly 13's.

i have a mixture of the petzl ultralights and the petzl ss's. the ultralights have a slight tendency to stick in hero ice, so i carry less of them on really wet pitches. it's nice to be able to pick and choose.

the only time i'll carry more than 12 screws is when i'm doing steep multi pitch ice that will eat screws. never needed them in NH, will likely need them at the lake this weekend.

[DonGillespie]

For me it doesn't depend. I have 12 screws and I carry them all.
Stubbies x2
13cm x 5
17cm x 4
22cm x 1

They're all BD turbo express, except for the 22 which is just a turbo and only used for v-threads. I bought about half of them used two years ago so at the end of this season I'm going to pick up some more and rotate out the older ones.

[cwoodall]

My rack is similar to Don's at the moment.

Stubbies x1 (well I will have it soon)
13cm x 5
17cm x 5
22cm x 1

I have a mix of alpine and quickdraws.

We will see how it works out.