Ice axe
1 – pick
2 – head
3 – adze
4 – leash
5 – leash stop
6 – shaft with rubber grip
7 – spike

An ice axe is a multi-purpose mountaineering tool carried by practically every mountaineer. The narrow sense used here excludes ice tools for ice climbing. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (315x724, 108 KB) Summary Summary Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Ice axe ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (315x724, 108 KB) Summary Summary Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Ice axe ... Mountaineering is the sport, hobby or profession of walking, hiking and climbing up mountains. ... Ice climbing is the recreational activity of climbing ice formations such as icefalls, and frozen waterfalls. ...

An ice axe consists of at least five components:

• pick (1) — a hooked or curved end of the head that draws to a point set with teeth. The hooked design allows the axe to dig in faster when trying to self-arrest.
• head (2) — usually made of steel and includes the pick and adze. One grips the head using either a self-arrest or self belay grip. There is a hole in the centre of the head called a carabiner hole but it is mostly used for attaching a wrist leash.
• adze (3) — the flat, widest section of the head used for chopping steps in hard snow and ice. Ice climbing tools may have a hammer instead.
• shaft (6) — straight, with a uniform cross-section that is usually wider in the adze-to-pick direction than in the side-to-side direction, and is flat on the sides and smoothly rounded on the pick and adze sides; and usually made of metal, e.g., aluminum or titanium, or a composite material including some component such as fiberglass, Kevlar or carbon filament.
• spike, or ferrule (7) — a steel point at the bottom is used to plunge the ice axe into snow for stability, balance and safety. Sometimes used on rocky trails for balance, though one must take care not to dull the spike.

Ice axes are sometimes made or used with additional parts: Self arrest is a mountaineering related maneuver in which a climber that has fallen and is sliding down a snow or ice slope arrests, stops, the slide by himself without recourse to a rope or other belay system. ... A pick is a tool used for manual labour which consists of a hard spike attached perpendicular to a handle. ... Adze The tool known as the adze [pronounced adds] serves for smoothing rough-cut wood in hand woodworking. ... In mountaineering, a climber can employ a self-belay with an ice axe to prevent a slide down a snow-covered slope. ... The word comes from the German expression Karabinerhaken. Yet German climbers would always call it shortly Karabiner. Note that, in German, Karabiner also means carbine (a short rifle). ... General Name, Symbol, Number aluminium, Al, 13 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 3, p Appearance silvery Atomic mass 26. ... General Name, Symbol, Number titanium, Ti, 22 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 4, 4, d Appearance silvery metallic Atomic mass 47. ... Bundle of fiberglass Fiberglass or glassfibre is material made from extremely fine fibers of glass. ... Chemical structure of Kevlar. ... General Name, Symbol, Number carbon, C, 6 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 14, 2, p Appearance black (graphite) colorless (diamond) Atomic mass 12. ... Filaments surrounding a solar flare, caused by the interaction of the plasma in the Suns atmopshere with its magnetic field. ... A ferrule (possibly the Latin diminutive of ferrum iron) is a name for types of metal objects. ...

• leash (4) — webbing with an adjustable loop to secure the axe to hand. The leash is often secured to the shaft by a ring, constrained to slide a limited distance on the shaft.
• leash stop (5) — simply enough, keeps the leash from slipping off of the ice axe.
• snow basket (not shown) — similar to those typical on the lower ends of ski poles, mounted temporarily with the shaft through its center, close to the spike, to keep the spike from sinking much deeper into snow when the axe is held by its head and used point-down for support or stability.

Ice-axe spike-to-head lengths range generally from 60 to 90 cm (or about 24 to 36 in.) in length, reflecting the target of reaching from loosely-closed hand (on the head) nearly to the ground. The mid-19th century 5-foot (1.5 m) alpenstock ancestors of modern ice axes, and shorter intermediate versions, had wooden shafts, usually of hickory, but the lighter weight and durability of late-20th-century and newer axes eliminate all but historical considerations as sources of interest in those earlier styles. This skiers poles are tucked under his arms. ... A centimetre (American spelling centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length that is equal to one hundredth of a metre, the current SI base unit of length. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Species See text Comparison of Carya nuts Ripe hickory nuts ready to fall, Andrews, SC Hickory is a tree of the genus Carya, including 17-19 species of deciduous trees with pinnately compound leaves and large nuts. ... The 20th century began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar. ...

The ice axe is not only used as an aid to climbing, but also as a self rescue tool to stop an uncontrolled glissade. Self-arrest is a mountaineering related maneuver in which a climber that has fallen and is sliding down a snow or ice slope arrests (stops) the slide by himself without recourse to a rope or other belay system. ... Glissade is the usually voluntary act of descending a steep slope of snow in a controlled manner either for the sheer thrill of the ride and/or to bypass tedious scree. ...

Many backpacks designed with mountaineering tasks in mind will include at least one ice axe loop, mounted near the bottom of the vertical surface farthest from the wearer, each of which can secure one axe to that surface when it is not needed. These loops are effective, but their use is counter-intuitive, and often hard to grasp until experienced: A backpack A backpack is, in its simplest form, a cloth sack carried on ones back and secured with two straps that go over the shoulders and below the armpits. ...

The axe must be held with head up, and adze rather than pick pointing away from the vertical center-line of the pack, while the shaft is lowered through the loop until the pick and adze rest on the loop. This sounds illogical (and looks so, if correctly executed) since the shaft appears to be positioned to flop around against the pack wearer's legs, or the spike to stab them.

These problems resolve when the procedure finishes with rotating the axe 180 degrees, with its head as axis: this moves the spike away from the pack to horizontal, and then upward to vertical. The center of the loop is then just above the axe's head, instead of below, and the adjacent portions of the loop wrap under the pick and adze respectively.

Securing the shaft against the pack near the top of the pack makes the spike point fairly straight up, where any hazard it might offer is at least visible; the pick is flat against the back of the pack; and the short and relatively dull adze sticks out little if any beyond the side of the pack.

Trivia

An ice axe was infamously used in the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940^[1] and, more recently, the murder of Anthony Walker. Note: This page is very long. ... Wikinews has news related to: Anthony Walker murdered in racial attack in Liverpool, England Front page of The Independent newspaper, 2005-08-01 Anthony Walker (21 February 1987 – 30 July 2005) was a black A-level student from Huyton, Merseyside, England. ...

External links

• History of the ice axe at grivel.com, as of 2006-08-27
• GoXplore Guides article on the Ice Axe

Notes