The Spur is SHIT!!!

"The Spur is SHIT!!!"
-Jeff Mercier-

I would say the use of the spur in dry-tooling has gone the way of the leash no serious mixed climbers active today use this device. As a recreational tool the spur will still retain a following much in the same way as the leash does, but the wheel has turned, the game as it were now fundamentally changed.

I ditched the spur out of necessity, all major competitive events including the Ice World Cup now forbid its use so training with the spur is absolutely pointless (oh, bad pun...). In more direct terms I cannot travel this winter so much, I am now left to climb many routes I have already sent using the spur to some degree, what better way to freshen the experience than to go back bare-back? I also hate the thing, my Raptor crampons are equipped with an immense orange blade that is forever threatening to cut my rope, flip me over in a fall or inflict a life-threatening wound to myself or my belayer. To combat this I would carry a spur-kit so I could only bolt the things on if I "needed it".

Well, I don't... Sitting down to bolt that dumb thing on slows down the day, indeed the use of the spur slows the climbing down, an endless succession of spur-assisted rests. Better to just go all out, ALLEZ!!! I was doing a send this past weekend, I had made a clip then all the sudden I was on the ice, the whole crux sequence had gone by in a blur, I had to ask the guys I was with, "what did I do?", so focused was I on the climbing.

Then there is technology. This winter I am equipped with the new Kayland Ice Dragon mixed boot, the Dragon is a noticeable improvement over the previous Ice Comp, warmer, lower profile with a more precise feel and above all a generous climbing-rubber heel and toe cup. What this allows for is more rock-shoe-like maneuverings, I boulder a good deal at the Horsetooth Reservoir near my home so strategic heel-hooks are by no means foreign. Anyway the back points on the Raptor are massive to begin with and offer some traction, lastly the front-plate "raking" points do good service.

Then there is the hype, if for example the Ouray Ice Festival bills the competitors as "some of the best in the world" shouldn't I aspire to that phrasing? Irrespective of the pronunciations of a consortium of drips Mixed is not dead but rather continuously evolving, either you adopt the new tactics or you get moth-balled in the collective climbing consciousness. If you are billed as an "athlete" then be athletic, no endless hanging about on huge metal blades picking your nose while your belayer freezes and spectators doze, get on with it!

This is no semantic argument, Ice Festivals are inhabited by "old-timey" ice climbers who never made the transition to mixed, they speak at times derisively of "dry-tooling" referring to their pedigrees of having engaged in "real climbing". This is of course utter rubbish, Grade 6 ice just isn't that radical anymore what with turbo-screws, leashless tools and modern crampons, plus everything gets pocked-out rather quickly permitting ready progress.

My point here being that I don't want to wake up and find myself in that dubious category, when I can no longer play the game I will exit as gracefully as is feasible, no point in being a curmudgeon or just a plain old drag. I find it a tad uncomfortable seeing some of these old wrecks out and about at the various Festivals, limping around with a sour look stitched into their puss, don't they have anything else to do?

For me now though, there is no "end" in the "send", if Randy Couture can still show up for the big show then so will I.

Photo: Joe Skalsky.