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.

If JC Dubeau is known it’s somewhat as a dark horse.

Search for JC online and you won’t find any trip reports or beta spraying, but as a soloist with a selfie stick he has surprisingly good photos on IG for someone who likes to keep a low profile. JC is also an older athlete who doesn’t train or project yet he will likely send yours if you let him. 💪

So who is this guy?

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 How there’s old and there’s bold, but there’s no old-bold climbers
• 🧊 His five goes rule and other principles to climb by
• 🧊 Climbing without a rope more often than with
• 🧊 Designing gear
• 🧊 And much more

🧊 Resources and links:
You can follow JC on Instagram — for often glorious fisheye photos — at @jcdubeau.

📸: Cover photo courtesy of JC.

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.

Passion, conviction, obsession. Heart and soul. Words to describe the devoted. Those driven to produce what had never existed before — a crusade to push the sport forward.

When Bill Belcourt talks product, you listen. The former head of R&D at Black Diamond, Bill helmed the department during the heydey, when anything was possible and all roads led to BD for product innovation. Chances are, if you’ve used BD climbing gear in the past 30 years, you’ve used Bill’s work.

Now, Bill leads Blue Ice - North America, where the work continues.

In this episode, we chat about:

• 🧊 Why product discovery is a life project, not a job
• 🧊 How finding your people can change everything
• 🧊 The lifecycle of innovation in business and industry
• 🧊 Life lessons from Randy Rackliff and Mark Twight

Resources and links:

Bill isn’t really active on social media, so no point in sharing links. We didn’t talk about it in the episode, but Bill has been at the vanguard of paragliding in the U.S. for decades (and has several long-distance records). If you’d like to learn more about that facet of his life, this is a good podcast episode.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the (mythology?) of Black Diamond, I enjoyed this article from Outside, “Welcome to the Mutant Factory”.

And of course, if you’d like to support a climbing brand who is continuing the work, check out Blue Ice at blueice.com.

...

📸: Cover photo by Barry Blanchard.

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.