Browsing through Will Gadd's ice climbing app, Marty came across Vanilla Ice, a WI2, class 1, 70m flow on the south shore of Lake Minnewanka. The cool thing about this climb is not just the vertical frozen water, but the horizontal frozen water that you must cross to get to it.
Always looking for that extra element of adventure doing it the same way that the first ascent party did it, we chose to skate the length to the big bend, the only real feature marking the approach. The lake had been frozen for a week or so, but some people had fallen in recently, so we were carrying hockey sticks and using ice screws to test the depth along the way. It was always at least 17cm where we tested. The further we went the thicker it got. Thankfully!
Being new to the whole lake-skating scene (and skating as it is), I was jumpy and made Marty skate before me, especially having big packs on which increased our weight. But all was fine and I was soon enjoying gliding on the smooth, sapphire ice.
It hadn't snowed yet so the quality of ice was incredible. After a while though the ice became really rough and had a peculiar pattern to it. So we switch to boots and crampons and walked the rest of the way. We encountered 3 different consistencies of rough ice: circular formations that kind of looked like nests, very thin and jagged upward facing "musical" ice, and white ice chunks frozen together by darker blue ice. So impressive.
There isn't any flagging or anything, but you can see the ice from the lake so just ascend steeply uphill to the base. Its a low angle climb that we climbed in one long pitch. The ice app says to walk off but we didn't make it to the top with all our rope so we rapped twice off clean v-threads.
Back we went towards the start of the lake. Cruisy, until the last 100m and I guess the sun of the day had taken a small toll, and a large crack had opened up perpendicular to our course. Marty warned me too late and I went straight through it, one foot went in so I threw my body onto the other side. Best outcome is a bruised knee I'd say! Guess I need to practice jumping in my skates next.
Adventurous day out combining two activities that you don't get to combine very often. If you're looking for an engaging, pumpy climb, this is not a good option, but on a beautiful day when the lake is frozen smooth, it's a great reason to get outside. It also snowed the very next day so we got very lucky with the near perfect conditions.