I WAS THE ONE WHO KIND OF FOUND THE PLACE. A lot of doing something like this is figuring out how to work safely in the environment. It’s so three-dimensional. It’s just fascinating to figure out how to climb this stuff. You’re climbing around icicles and through them and it’s just a wild place. You’re climbing about 100 metres behind the falls. It is a big waterfall. There’s probably a kilometre horizontally and 200 metres vertically of ice climbing to do in there. I mean, you could fly a Cessna behind this thing on a good day. It’s one of the coolest places on the planet.

ASSESSING NEW HIGH-RISK SITUATIONS IS VERY DIFFICULT TO DO, and this is a new situation. We were very, very cautious at first until we started to get a feel for the place, and it’s still a place where you have to operate in a very structured way.

When we first went down, we just sat there and looked at it. We couldn’t even figure out how to get to the ice. We actually ended up throwing rocks in front of us, breaking off a channel through the ice, and then breaking off everything over our heads by throwing rocks and chunks of ice and sort of standing out of the way. It felt a little bit like standing on a tree branch while you sawed it off. Over time we figured out how to make safe areas underneath the icicles, and then expand those areas as we climbed out. But it really was kind of mind-boggling to figure out how to deal with this stuff at first.

MOST ICE CLIMBING IS DONE ON ICE THAT FORMS AS A WATERFALL FREEZES. It looks a lot like the ice in your drink. It’s very hard, very solid, it sticks together pretty well. Whereas the ice in the spray cave develops when the falling water from a really big waterfall sprays, hits the walls behind it and freezes. It has the consistency of, kind of, Styrofoam or meringue. It’s a very different thing. We’re calling the stuff “spray ice.”

Normal ice climbing, if it’s staying cold, you’re pretty solid. And if you get into trouble, it’s easy to go down—down is generally the way out. Whereas on this climb, you’ve got to go back and then climb out to the rim—down and then back up and then out, which is a whole lot more work.

I’ve only encouraged people I think are highly competent to visit the place. If it’s a ski area it’s not a double black diamond—this is off the charts of difficulty. It’s like a quadruple black diamond.

THE SPONGY ICE MAKES THINGS MORE DANGEROUS. It also makes things possible that aren’t on normal ice. Normal ice, obviously, never really forms in an overhanging way because it’s water. It can only form vertically. This stuff, because it’s sticking to an overhanging wall, you get overhanging ice. It’s not necessarily more dangerous, but it’s less predictable.

As it grows, it gets heavier and at some point it’s going to break off. It’s a super dynamic situation. You have to be judging the rate of spray. The spray can ice your rope up and if your rope gets too icy, you won’t get down. You’d be the human popsicle there. So, you’ve got falling ice and you’ve got the spray, and then you’re in just a really dynamic environment. You can’t just walk around. There are huge icicles over your head. Those icicles are going to fall off at some point, so you’ve got to continually be thinking three-dimensionally. In there you are really concerned that the sky could fall and you can’t do anything about it.

AND THIS IS ON TOP OF ALL THE NORMAL HAZARDS OF BEING OUTSIDE IN THE WINTER. It’s cold. You’ve got to do a couple of rappels to get in there, so if something were to go wrong, rescue would be very difficult. You can’t just land a helicopter in there.

IN JUST A REALLY DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT. You can’t just walk around. there are huge icicles over your head. Those icicles are going to fall off at some point, so you’ve got to continually be thinking three-dimensionally. In there you are really concerned that the sky could fall and you can’t do anything about it.

And this is on top of all the normal hazards of being outside in the winter. It’s cold. You’ve got to do a couple of rappels to get in there, so if something were to go wrong, rescue would be very difficult. You can’t just land a helicopter in there.