Breo Tries...

 Ice Climbing

It was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation I felt as I drove up to The Ice Factor in Kinlochleven through the snow falling in Glencoe. The last time I had used an ice axe was one borrowed from a neighbour to chip the ice out of the driveway during the big freeze a year ago!

The Ice Factor is the world’s largest indoor ice climbing facility and the National Centre for Excellence. Climbs are up to 50ft high with varying degrees of overhang, so it promised a lot! The refrigerated ice room is made up of 500 tonnes of snow and ice and is kept well below freezing; although once we got started I was far from cold! I’d selected the new Breo “Trak” watch to wear to see how it performed on the day.

I was down for the 2 1/2 hour course for beginners and had time to have some lunch in the café prior to starting.

There were 3 other people in the group, up from London on holiday. I found out later that whilst they hadn’t done much ice work, they trained most weekdays on orthodox climbing walls! As the ice room can take 18 climbers we had acres of space to ourselves. We were kitted out with helmet, boots, harness, sharp crampons and 2 ice axes each. Our instructor Alex was great and took us through how to put the kit on, and then how to use it: You had to kick the points of the crampons in toes first into the ice and then use the ice axes to pull your upper body up and into the wall. It’s then a case of stepping up and using the axes to move up the wall (ok a bit more technical than that).

We worked in pairs with one climbing and one belaying and securing the safety rope. The key seemed to be to lean the centre of your body in as far as possible to the wall to keep your centre of gravity as vertically between the 4 points of contact. The first few climbs were exhilarating and tiring – kicking and then swinging the axes for each step vertically becomes quite tiring, but you can rest mid climb by letting each arm in turn dangle so the blood can flow back down the arms! At the top you leaned back, secured by the rope and harness and walked backwards down the wall then swapped with your buddy. The lactic acid really kicked in as we tried the harder more overhanging routes and I had my first falls – albeit held securely by my partner with the rope (thank you)!

I had a great time and would definitely recommend the experience. The “Trak” performed admirably: it coped with the freezing temperatures and the soft touch rubber strap ensured it was so comfortable you hardly knew it was there!