Joe Sears swung his ice axe high overhead and stuck it in the ice of Green Gully, a 150-foot frozen waterfall south of Livingston, Montana. Using his axe as a handhold, he pulled himself up, kicking the sharp points of his crampons into the ice. He tapped a rhythm against the ice—axe, axe, boot, boot—as he ascended the ice, tinted green by minerals in the nearby rocks.

         Joe stopped, set an ice screw, and attached it to our climbing rope with an oval snap-link carabiner to protect himself in case of a fall. I held the rope from below, letting out as much as he needed to climb, but keeping it tight to secure him.

         Using the minimum energy needed to advance, he held an efficient pace. His smooth movements appeared effortless, but I knew better. With only the front tips of the crampons, steel spikes strapped to climbing boots, in the ice, climbers feel a sense of falling backwards. The urge to pull forward on the handles of the ice tools has a high energy cost. The trick is finding a balance.

         As Joe climbed, he spiraled around the edge of the column and disappeared from sight. I could hear each strike on the ice. He was moving steadily upward.

         “This is looking good right here,” Joe said. “Just above me, it is completely vertical for the final twenty feet. That will be tough.”

         I released rope as Joe moved ahead. When he reached the vertical section, the rope movement slowed and a couple of minutes later, it stopped. I fought the urge to shout up, wanting to give him the chance to concentrate.

         No rope movement. A muffled comment from Joe.

         “Falling!” Joe's yell shattered the silence of the canyon.

         A split second later, the rope snapped tight against the anchor.

         Climbing gear rattled above me.

         An axe clattered against the ice, whirled through the air, and landed in the snowbank at the bottom. I clutched the rope with both hands and leaned, trying to avoid any ice, rocks, or other falling objects.

         Then silence.

***

Joe and I had been roommates at Chadron State College in Nebraska. We met through the school's Taekwondo Club and spent hundreds of hours practicing the martial arts together. We had worked our way up through the belts, and before we graduated, we had both earned black belts. We often sparred with each other, gaining a sense of trust in each other's ability to throw punches and kicks without causing injury.

         Our first major rock climbs together were at Devils Tower National Monument in northeastern Wyoming. There, we learned to handle the rope, use the safety equipment, and set secure anchors. As we had in Taekwondo, we practiced our new sport and brought the trust we had developed during the martial arts sparring to rock climbing and mountaineering. Some 18 years after our time together in college, that sense of teamwork and reliance was still strong as we climbed rock and ice together.

         From Devils Tower, we expanded and climbed mountains in Grand Teton National Park, the Beartooth Mountains in Montana, and in several locations near Bozeman, Montana, where Joe lived. After leaving Nebraska, he had earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Montana State University and directed the university's mass spectrometry lab. The canyons south of Bozeman are filled with frozen waterfalls, so Joe developed his skills on vertical ice by climbing with other professors on winter afternoons.

         Joe and I had hiked in before dawn, making the first boot prints in the fresh snow. The trees on both sides of the trail were coated in white. We were well-dressed, with layers of clothing and Gore-Tex jackets over the top. We wore thick mittens with windproof shells, and our feet were wrapped inside insulated mountaineering boots.

         We hiked up the rutted trail to the point where we could see the icy spire of Blue Gully, just to the left of Green Gully, then scrambled uphill. We planned to climb Blue Gully first, then if time allowed, give Green Gully a try.

         With sunrise, we could see down into the valley. No one had come up the trail behind us. The day was cloudless, crisp and 20 degrees above zero.

         As Joe climbed the first waterfall called Blue Gully, I could hear the steady tapping of his axes and crampons as he progressed upward. After half an hour, he stood on a narrow ledge of ice, placed two ice screws together to form an anchor, and tied himself to them.

         He had climbed a full rope length, over 150 feet, and would now belay the rope as I climbed up to him. The February ice was perfect. Each axe felt solid as I swung it into the ice. I had chilled a little waiting while Joe climbed, but I quickly warmed as I climbed the frigid column.

         When I reached Joe, he gave me the extra climbing gear. My turn to lead. I stepped to the side and edged around Joe. I climbed the last fifty feet to the top of Blue Gully where I found a large rock. I tied a rope around it and used it as an anchor. I pulled up the slack in the rope and shouted to Joe that I was ready for him to climb.

***

         As he climbed, I thought about the waterfall. Throughout the winter, the creek that formed the waterfall had frozen, drop by drop, leaving behind a vertical shaft of ice suspended in time. The ice is not smooth like a pond or skating rink, because it ripples over the rock surface beneath, splashes, and freezes. It is a slow process, a building that happens over days, but when it is finished, the clear ice shines, the ripples providing facets reflecting the sunlight. In the late spring, the process is reversed and the melting drops slide off. The frozen pillar shrinks until it returns to the flowing waterfall of summer.

         Many sports take place in an arena or stadium. Fans cheer. Reporters track the events and write an analysis. Cameras capture the movements, the faces, the emotions. Not so for the sport of ice climbing. Few reporters would want to follow us and record our efforts. That's not bad. In fact, as I tugged the rope to protect Joe's movements, I felt like it couldn't be better. We were each other's cheerleaders, each other's support. We talked when we needed to but left most of the day to the silence of the canyon. Our success on the climb, in that case, was ours alone. The joy was not dissipated throughout the grandstands, but held deep inside us, ready to be replayed for months in the future. We had seen each other climb, knew what a challenge it had been to overcome the vertical ice. On a wintry day, it would have been easy to stay home, to spend time inside, warm, and relaxed, but when Joe reached the ledge beside me, we shook hands and smiled. It was our private victory, a personal triumph.

         We sat on the rock ledge and drank water, ate a quick lunch, and looked at the view down into Paradise Valley just north of Yellowstone National Park. Joe and I loved days like this. We loved making plans, setting goals, then seeing them fall into place. We had talked about Blue Gully and Green Gully for a couple of years, so we were excited to climb there. Watching dreams happen is a joy.

***

Joe and I rappelled off the Blue Gully ice column. The climbing had gone well, and it was still early in the day. We felt strong, so Joe had suggested moving farther to our right and climbing the more difficult Green Gully. I agreed.

         We hiked to the base of the ice fall. There was a ledge of ice about twenty-five feet above the ground. Joe climbed up to it and set a solid anchor. I climbed up to him. I would belay him from that ledge, giving him an extra length of rope. That would make it easier for him to climb the difficult upper section and reach the top of the frozen waterfall.

         Joe had climbed up the face and angled to the right. That was where he was when I heard him yell and fall as the ice axe whizzed by me.

         “I was near the top of the climb,” Joe said. “I was just about to the point where I could climb off the vertical section onto a horizontal ledge.”

         After one hundred fifty feet of steep ice climbing, he could feel his arms burning, getting tired. He tried to relax them, to focus on maintaining his balance and finishing the climb. He had placed the ice tool in his left hand securely, and had climbed up with both feet, moving his left hand down toward his waist. He was trying hard to get a good placement with his right hand.

         “The ice was really hard in that section,” Joe said. “With my left hand low and my right hand high, it was an awkward move.”

         He tried four or five times to strike the ice tool in his right hand into the ice, but it wouldn't stick. He tapped it at the point where the ice and rock met, hoping to find a small crack between the rock and ice, but it was sealed tight. He even tried hooking the ice tool on small ledges of rock, but nothing seemed to catch.

         “I had climbed ten feet above my last ice screw, so I knew I did not want to fall. That would mean at least twenty feet of falling, and I did not want to risk that.”

         He needed to find a placement for his right-hand tool. He swung it back overhead, ready to hit the ice once again.

         “It happened so fast,” Joe said. “I swung my axe backward and that was it. I went over backwards and yelled. I must have fallen outward, as well, because I didn't hit anything, but when the rope caught me, I swung back into the ice and slammed into the ice wall with my lower back.”

         Joe was left hanging from the rope upside down.

         The rope had stretched tight against the anchor. I felt it flexing and knew he was moving himself against the ice above me.

         “I knew right away that nothing was broken,” Joe said. “I realized I was missing my right ice tool. It had fallen to the bottom. I pulled on the rope and got myself straightened up.”

         When Joe was secure on the ice again, I asked how he felt. He said he could move just fine, so he placed another ice screw in front of him, pulled up our second rope, and set an anchor so we could rappel down.

         We had known that a fall was a possibility on vertical ice. That's why we had a rope and protective equipment. That's why we had studied how to use it, how to move ourselves up and down a rock face or a frozen waterfall safely. There is inherent risk in going on a climb, just as there is in other activities like driving a car or riding a bicycle, events that have killed or injured many people. Every time we climbed, we took care to minimize those risks. We talked about the dangers and had, on several occasions, abandoned a climb which presented conditions that seemed too dangerous. On this climb, Joe had taken a rare fall, and the equipment and our system of using it had done exactly what it was supposed to do.

         With both of us back on the ground, we coiled our ropes, packed our equipment, and shouldered our backpacks. We hiked to our car, ready to drive home. That was enough excitement in the arena of ice.