Nelson ice ripe for climbing

MONTEBELLO — Lane Terrell was concerned about the cold.

Not that it was too cold, mind you, but not cold enough.

When temperatures keep some schools closed and many pipes frozen, Terrell makes the drive from his home in Lynchburg to Crabtree Falls in Nelson County for a rare winter activity in Virginia: ice climbing.

It’s a drive he has been making since 1978.

“I was a little worried on the drive up,” he said on a recent Wednesday. “I didn’t see much ice in the creek along the road, and that’s good indicator of conditions at the falls.”
He hoped that ice had formed a crust over the plunging water and along the cliffs at its side. If it’s not cold enough, the ice will not be thick enough to support safe climbing.

Having climbed ice in locations such as Colorado’s Estes Park and New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the recently retired Lynchburg firefighter is a veteran ice climber who won’t take chances on thin ice.
He wasn’t disappointed.
On the lowest of the five cascades in the 1,200-foot-long falls, ice hung in folds, like a blanket tossed on the cliffs.
There are only a few Virginia climbers, including Terrell, who await the arrival of winter with the hope that a little ice will form. The group is so small, in fact, that ice climbing sales traffic at Outdoor Trails in Daleville is limited to three to five people annually, according to Sarah Whitney, a store employee. “Usually it’s some of our regular customers who are looking to get into [ice climbing] and want us to help outfit them,” she said.
When word gets out that the ice is in, the climbers flock to Crabtree Falls or a handful of other locations, such as Apple Orchard Falls near Arcadia or White Oak Canyon in Shenandoah National Park, for the few days — occasionally weeks — of frigid but fleeting adventure. Some winters, hardly an icicle forms.

But when the ice is in, Crabtree is a favorite spot for Terrell. Because partners are so hard to find, he climbs alone most of the time, though seldom ropeless, and only on the easiest terrain. For safety, he presets a rope and uses a self-arresting device on his climbing harness to keep secure.
“Crabtree is really where I got started,” he said. “Back then I had one small ice hammer and a 70-millimeter mountaineering ice axe.” Now he uses supersharp ice axes with bent handles for easy swinging and gymnastic movement, and multipointed crampons on his boots that grip this ice like jagged claws. “A lot has changed since then,” he said.
In that time he has also raised a family, and he now has a grandson he hopes to introduce to the sport one day.

Swing after swing, cascade after cascade, he climbed the falls, which stretch for nearly a quarter mile, returning for a little more climbing on the lowest and steepest cascade before heading home.
“There’s just something about it here. The solitude. The alpine feel. I love it,” he said.