Ice Ice Beta

This episode is part of the Meet the Maker series where we highlight an entrepreneur who is making specialty gear for ice climbers. If you’ve ever wanted to hear the story behind some of your favorite – and soon to be favorite – products, that’s what today’s conversation is about.

We’re doing this because we believe that thoughtfully-designed gear is more than the sum of its parts: they are crafted by folks who have decades of experience in the sport, are refined through countless iterations and testing, and brought to life with genuine passion to solve real problems.

Said another way, these folks represent the heart and soul of product innovation.

🎙 Today we chat with Doug Heinrich

Doug is the the Founder of Aniiu, which makes technical ice climbing gloves.

Doug is a longtime Salt Lake City climber, route developer, and alpinist, among many superlatives. He’s also the VP of Product Development at Black Diamond. What do you get when you combine 30+ years of ice climbing experience with technical chops?

Listen to the episode to find out.

🎁 Giveaway

Doug is generously offering a few pairs of their ViinsonTM Short gloves to listeners.

Here’s how to enter:

In the conversation with Doug, be on the lookout for the answer to the following question:

• 👉 Takashima, Aniiu’s partner, and perhaps the premier technical glove makers in Japan, are now under which generation of family ownership?

Once you have the answer to the question:

• Follow @aniiu_gloves and @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
• DM the answer to the question to @ice_ice_beta
• Comment on the giveaway post on our Instagram: “#yourfriendinthecold” once you’ve sent in your answer
• Share the giveaway post to your story for an extra entry
• Winners will be randomly selected from submissions that meet all the rules on Monday, December 2!

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others.

This episode is part of the Meet the Maker series where we highlight an entrepreneur who is making specialty gear for ice climbers. If you’ve ever wanted to hear the story behind some of your favorite – and soon to be favorite – products, that’s what today’s conversation is about.

We’re doing this because we believe that thoughtfully-designed gear is more than the sum of its parts: they are crafted by folks who have decades of experience in the sport, are refined through countless iterations and testing, and brought to life with genuine passion to solve real problems.

Said another way, these folks represent the heart and soul of product innovation.

🎙 Today we chat with Paul Shaugnessy and Charlie Faust

Paul and Charlie are the the Founders of Beartooth Alpine, who specialize in metal goods made in the USA.

Driven by an ethos of “do not conform”, their mission is to produce the best gear possible out of the best materials. Period.

Their latest release — specialized picks — have gotten folks excited: their 2mm-tapered Ice Hawk is optimized for minimal displacement and durability while their Master Scratchers have been hailed as the best ice climbing mixed pick that will actually hold up to the rigors of scratchy terrain.

🎁 Giveaway

Paul and Charlie are generously offering a set of picks to listeners. They have picks for all major ice tool models, including the Nomic, X-Dream, Hydra, and Dark Machine.

Here’s how to enter:

In the conversation, be on the lookout for the answer to the following question:

• 👉 What is one fundamental difference between their picks and most stock picks on the market?

Once you have the answer to the question:

• Follow @beartoothalpine and @ice_ice_beta on Instagram
• DM the answer to the question to @ice_ice_beta
• Comment on the giveaway post on our Instagram: “#donotconform” once you’ve sent in your answer
• Share the giveaway post to your story for an extra entry
• Winners will be randomly selected from submissions that meet all the rules on Monday, December 2!

...

📸: Cover photos courtesy of Paul and Charlie

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others.

Eliteclimb makes the lightest ice tools in the world, and it’s not even close. It’s possible because Jarosław "Jarek" Walewski uses a mix of carbon and kevlar composites, and nothing else—the only metal in his tools are the bolts and picks.

The one-man brand has been bucking industry trends for over a decade now, and it’s his unique position as an independent craftsman that lets Jarek pursue solutions that the bigger brands ignore.

By being attuned to the community and working with some of the world’s best, their tools have been used on no oxygen ascents of Lhotse, expeditions to places like K2 and Broad Peak and at the highest-end of drytooling today.

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 How Jarek came to understand composites by working in one of the best glider factories in the world
• 🧊 Why he chooses to make each tool by hand
• 🧊 The advantages of composite materials
• 🧊 Why moving fast and trying things is a good strategy
• 🧊 Being open to opportunities and feedback (positive and negative)
• 🧊 His philosophy on business, craftsmanship, and production

Resources and links:

To learn more about Eliteclimb’s tools, head to eliteclimb.com. All of their tools can be customized (from weight, strength, colors, etc.), so if you’re interested, be sure to reach out to Jarek.

On the website, you can also read trip reports from expeditions where their tools have been used. Lastly, there are more updates on their Instagram, @eliteclimb.

...

📸: Episode cover photo by Artur Małek courtesy of Jarek

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others.

It’s a tale old as time: Narrative is the vehicle that connects us to something greater. And for Christian Beckwith, he’s built a career on that foundation.

You probably know of Christian, or have interacted with his work. He’s spent more than thirty years immersed in the world of alpinism, and in that time he was the editor of The American Alpine Journal, co-founded Alpinist — which Reinhold Messner once called “the greatest climbing magazine in the world” — and recently started a “hardcore history” podcast about the 10th Mountain Division called Ninety-Pound Rucksack.

If you haven’t heard of it, you might be living under the rock... but since you're listening to a climbing podcast, that very well may be the case. Regardless, it’s great and I encourage you to give it a listen.

In this episode, we don’t talk much about the podcast, instead, we hone in on:

• How to complicate seemingly simple projects by going deep
• Clues to find the narrative in anything you do
• What can happen when you follow your curiosity
  

Timestamps:

05:18 - From New England to the Tetons

14:45 - Building community through climbing

22:38 - Narrative as a tool for connection and change

27:25 - Exploring the awe

34:20 - Diving into the contribution of climbers on the 10th Mountain Division

42:28 - How history is written

47:56 - Climbing Riva Ridge to understand history

Resources and links:

To listen to Ninety-Pound Rucksack, head to your favorite podcast platform or learn more about it at christianbeckwith.com. If you love what Christian is doing and want to support longform narrative projects like this, I highly encourage you to become a patron at patreon.com/NinetyPoundRucksack.

Find the rest of the notes on the episode page.

Credits:

Episode cover photo provided by Christian.

Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).

Patreon:

That's it for Season 1! If you enjoyed the conversations and want to help us do many more for Season 2, consider supporting us on Patreon. (And for less than the price of a bougie beer per month).

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others.

🧊 About the episode

In Matthias Scherer’s words, Norway provides the true character of ice climbing. That is to say, you can always find adventure, from single pitch up to vertical kilometer ice flows.

Outside of popular destinations like Rjukan and Hemsedal, you will rarely find a line that has been picked out. Depending on where you go — from the 1,000-meter ice falls of Gudvangen to the 1,700 fjords that fracture the coastline, to the arctic ice of the far north — you are likely to have a first ascent-like experience, if not an actual FA.

And of course, there are plenty of beginner and intermediate-friendly areas too. Rjukan, for example, has 100s of easily accessible climbs.

This is Matthias’ second time on the podcast. If you recall, he joined us last year to talk about his home, Cogne, another epicenter of ice in Europe. This time around, in classic Matthias style, we discuss:

• 🧊 Why so many of his top 100 ice climbs are in Norway
• 🧊 The history of ice climbing in the country
• 🧊 Classic routes and areas
• 🧊 Logistics for planning your own trip
• 🧊 The upcoming ice festival in Rjukan, which runs from Thursday, February 6 to Monday, February 10.

“The human brain, I think, cannot get what Norway means for ice climbing. It's a little bit like if you look up to the sky in the night and you see all the stars; it's the same with Norway, it's impossible. Because 1,700 fjords, over 50,000 kilometers of coastline, and you can say in every fjord at least there's 10 to 15 ice climbs — so you can do the math by yourself."

🧊 Resources and links

Matthias has climbed over 1,000 frozen waterfalls, and you can see his top 100 list here. To follow along with his adventures, check him out on Instagram, @matthiasscherer or his website matthias-scherer.net.

Want to join for the Norrøna Ice Festival in Rjukan? It runs from February 6-10 and you can find all the details on the website.

To learn a bit more about Matthias, he did an interview on the Norrøna podcast.

Lastly, Matthias would like to thank his sponsors for supporting his adventures: Norrøna, Petzl, Scarpa, and Gloryfy.

📸: Cover photo by Tanja Schmitt.

Credits:

• Intro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!).
• This episode was edited by Andrew Salomone of salomonesound.com.
• And of course, a big thanks to our sponsors, Aniiu Gloves and Furnace Industries!

Become a member:

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the conversation and want to help us do many more episodes like this, please consider becoming a member.

(For less than the price of a bougie beer per month!).

🗣️ Leave us a review!:

You can also help us out by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. Reviews are helpful for new listeners that come across the show, and a good rating means Spotify, Apple, and other platforms are more likely to recommend it to others.