Ice Gear

Trigger Fingers & Upper Grips
Trigger fingers and upper tool grips are gaining popularity with the increase in leashless climbing. A Trigger finger is a hook, like a pinky rest, that separates the index finger from the others. The idea of the Trigger finger is to give more precise control and further support for the hand. Something important to note about Trigger fingers is that they need to be adjusted to fit your hand or else you can risk injury. If too much weight is applied to the index finger alone, it is possible to damage a tendon. Properly sizing the Trigger finger can be somewhat tricky if you use a variety of glove thicknesses while climbing.

Upper grips are small rests that resemble the early designs of pinky hooks. They provide a small ledge above the regular grip for bumping a hand higher up the shaft or for matching both hands on one tool while leashless climbing. A solid grip higher on the tool allows you to gain more height per tool placement. This allows you to reach better ice that is higher up, or just cover more ground with fewer swings. All "Z-Handled" tools have upper grips for this reason, and now many tool manufacturers are providing upper grip add-ons for their modern ice tool lines.

Z-handled Tools (aka Leashless tools)
A Z-handled tool is any tool with a specialized grip that has a different angle from the shaft. In addition, the Z-handled tools often have an upper match. Z-Handled tools were originally designed for difficult overhanging rock and ice climbing and were the first leashless tools. However, as these tools have gained in popularity, their design has improved for better swing in all-around application. While these are generally referred to as "leashless" tools (they are rarely used with leashes), regular modern tools with pinky hooks are also commonly used for climbing leashless.

The important features to look for in Z-handled tools depend on the desired application. If the tool is primarily going to be used for ice, your first priority will be that it swings like a normal ice tool. If the tool is mostly for drytooling and occasional ice routes, hooking performance and stability should be of top importance. Other important features are that the tool feels stable when you move from the lower grip to the upper grip, and that the pick is "quiet" (not skittery) on very small rock holds where slight movement could cause it to slip. Generally, a tool with similarly angled lower and upper grips will be more stable when you change grips. The design of the pick will also play a large role in the stability of a tool (more on this later). When choosing a Z-Handled tool it is important to consider that, while most do fine on both rock and ice, some have been optimized for rock performance specifically.

With Z-Handled tools it is important to consider the grip diameter and length. We've already discussed grip diameter, and most tools fall into one of two categories with regard to grip length: either adjustable, or so big it doesn't matter. Tools like the Black Diamond Fusion and Petzl Nomic allow the user to adjust the handle to fit their hand specifically. This can be a very nice feature, but with these ”fit like a glove” grips, it is important to be sure that the gloves you'll want to wear (thin or thick) will fit comfortably into the adjusted grip.

The heads of Z-handled tools vary more than any kind on the market. Some have full sized hammers, some have mini hammers, and others have no hammer at all. The benefit of having no hammer is that the head of the tool is streamlined and narrow and will thus fit into small constrictions. Not having a hammer can also be advantageous if you hit yourself in the face with your tool. The drawback is that a tool with no hammer can not generally be used on a traditionally protected mixed route unless you carry an extra hammer as a 3rd tool for pounding pitons. While this can definitely be a worthwhile trade off, many manufacturers provide an intermediate option: tools with a mini-hammer. Modular headed tools allow for setup flexibility. The Fusion, the Reactor and the Viper all have the same head design, so you could put a Viper hammer or adze onto either of the other tools. Similarly, the Quark Ergo has the same head design as the regular Quark, so you could retrofit a Quark adze to that tool.

Leach

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there are as many leash choices out there as there are tools. The most popular are the clipper style leashes. These come with a cuff that unclips from the tool. This easily lets you disconnect a hand to place screws, match tools, etc.

Black Diamond makes the Android leash (clipper style) which will fit on any tool. Petzl and Grivel both make clippers that work well with their tools. When setting up your clip leashes, it is important to make sure that you can reach the head of your tool without having to unclip the leash. This will allow for easy transitions when mantling on ice or plunging in snow. Clipper leashes work well in the alpine, though there is the danger of dropping a tool because you will be completely unclipped from it at some point. To avoid this, you can either be careful, use an umbilical cord setup, or go with standard leashes. By far the most popular design for a standard leash is the lockdown. These glorified slip knots grab hold of your wrist nicely but can be easily loosened by hooking a special loop over the hammer. This style is a good and cheap alternative to clip leashes.

Ice screw

Placing an ice screw is one of the most challenging aspects of ice climbing. While a cam may take only seconds to drop in and clip to the rope, an ice screw will take much longer and require more energy to place. To make things easier on yourself, make screw sharpness a top priority. All the knob turning aids in the world won’t help you unless you can get the teeth to bite in the first place.

Screw Care
Don't scratch the inside of a screw or let it rust. A scratched or rusted inside can quickly become troublesome because ice will stick to the abnormalities and make the screw nearly impossible to place. Applying a thin layer of WD-40 on the hanger and inside the tube will keep your screws fresh.

Don't dent the threads. If the threads are rough they will create more friction while twisting the screw in, and thus be harder to place. Some screws come with thread-protectors, though an ice screw protector (ex: Black Diamond Screw Up) is much easier to use. Another advantage of a screw protector is that you can leave the (hard to keep track of) screw caps at home. Eventually your screws will get dinged up and you'll need to sharpen them. There are several sources on the web about how to do this. Just start slowly and experiment with a junker.

Hanger Designs & Racking
There are many different kinds of hangers out there that come on ice screws. Nearly all new screws have widgets that spin free of the hanger and allow you to place a screw much, much faster than without one. The main concerns with hanger designs are how they will place and how they will rack together on your harness. If the hangers do not have a relatively similar design, they can be difficult to remove from your harness. If you rack too many screws on one carabiner, you run into the danger of the screws unclipping by themselves. This can be especially problematic when you mix hanger styles. Hangers fall into two general styles: long hangers with an eye at the end (Turbo Express, Omega Pacific, Laser Sonic, Helix) or small square hangers (Grivel 360). Each hanger style has it's own advantages. To place a screw, the surface of the ice should be nearly flat through the arc that the hanger will turn as you twist it in. On funky or featured ice, square hangers can be advantageous because they require a smaller arc to turn and you will thus need to clear less surface ice in order to place the screw. To somewhat alleviate the issue of needing to clear away a large arc of ice when using the long hanger style, manufacturers often allow a large amount of play in the connection to the screw so that the hanger can rise above some surface irregularities as it spins. An advantage of the long hanger screws is that you can rack many more of them onto a single carabiner than you could with square hanger screws.

If the ice is so thin that your screw will not go all the way in, you have three choices: 1. Use a shorter screw that can go in all the way (best), 2. Clip the hanger if it is no further than 2 inches from the surface of the ice, or 3. Tie something to the tube of the screw where the screw leaves the ice, and clip to that (yikes). For the last option, it is advisable to use something strong for your new clip in point. Clove or girth hitching webbing to the screw is one option, but these have been shown to slip off or cut on the hanger. An alternative is to use a nut in a makeshift way: slide the nut down on its cable, fit it over the hanger, and snug the nut up against the tube of the screw. This provides a much stronger and more secure tie off than the webbing.