Ice Tools
The ice tool is possibly the most intriguing piece of ice gear for non-climbers and climbers alike. It's rugged image is what attracts non-climbers, but climbers are more impressed by the practicality and function of ice climbing tools. Over the years the tools have been improved, but the overall idea has stayed the same.
Today, with more aggressive tools, lighter materials, longer and sharper picks, and better grips, tool related falls can almost always be attributed to poor ice quality or user error. It is still helpful and important to look at just how much force a pick is holding when weighted on the ice.
The angles Alpha and Beta are very helpful for finding how much clearance there is for swinging on hard ice climbs and finding purchase on hard mixed routes, where rock climbing is done with ice climbing gear.
With good purchase, it takes a few assumptions to figure out how much force the ice is withstanding from the pick. Very rarely should an ice tool need to take the entire weight of a person, but there are a few complicated moves like the one below where it does.
The figure four move is when he is hanging on one ice tool on the small hanging ice barrels, and hooks his leg over his arm. Patrick Auftenblatten, the climber in the video, is resting all of his 80 kg on the tool when he does a move like this. Using Newton's second law:
That's a
very significant force, and that is why moves like the
figure four are rarely done. They induce fatigue and
"pump," much quicker than regular moves.