A few years ago, I was invited to participate in a segment on ice climbing for the public television show, Oregon Field Guide. Unfortunately for us all, I recently found clips from that episode on youtube.
After the producer called me, I got in touch with a few people who used to work here (Mark Allen and Gene Pires) as well as Alex Krawarik, whom I wrote an ice climbing guidebook with some time ago. Everybody was psyched to go out, climb some ice and be on television. A bit of the psyche drained away when we realized what this would really entail.
Though in shape, the camera crew wasn't used to long slogs in snow shoes. As such, it took us a long long time to get to the base of the routes. Neither of our objectives were in very good condition. Indeed, the route that Mark and I climbed was in terrible shape and took an extremely long time to send.
My favorite element of this video revolves around the fact that they put a microphone next to my mouth. As a result, while I'm climbing low-angled ice my breathing sounds as if I'm completely and utterly worked; whereas everybody else climbs in complete silence...apparently not breathing at all...
--Jason D. Martin
