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What winter protection?

Though much of what is mentioned here is relevant to climbing in the bigger mountains or for continental ice climbing, British winter climbing is unique and so is the way you protect it. Winter climbing pro is for rock, snow, ice and crud. These are the four climbing/protection mediums that winter climbing offers. You can encounter all four on any given route, or just one of them.

There will always be rock around, even if you are climbing continental waterfall ice. Therefore some rock gear will always be carried no matter what winter climbing you are doing.

Nuts
The stalwart winter climbing protection.  Cheap, light, robust and unaffected by winter conditions.  Small ones are not so much use as small cracks are often choked with ice and snow.  The medium and large ones go in loads however.  How many you carry depends on what you are up to. Don’t bother with nuts on slings.  They are very fiddly to place when wearing gloves.

Hexes
Again, don’t carry small hexes on dyneema. Like nuts on slings it is hard to fiddle them into small cracks using gloved hands. Hexes on wire are more useful in whichever size. The top four sizes of hex should be considered mandatory for every Scottish winter climber whether on wire or dyneema. They are incredibly useful, go in all the time and can take hammering in and out. The new DMM Torque Nuts are doubly good. They offer more placement options due to their shape and they have an extendable sling built into them, increasing your options. Outside range of Nuts and Hexes

Cams
Sprung Loaded Camming Devices (SLCD's) require the rock to be free of ice.  If there is a lining of ice on the inside of a crack then the cam will not bite.  Cams are used winter climbing but they should always be treated with suspicion.  Ways to improve the safety of your cam placements when winter climbing include

• Feeling the inside of the crack with your bare skin to see what ice is there.
• Scraping away ice and crud on the inside of a crack with your gloved hand or your axe.
• Rapidly jiggling a placed cam up and down in the crack to scrape away ice and test the placement.
• Taking a can of wind screen de-icer with you.

Pegs
Only used when hammerless pro is unavailable.  Stubby, thin pegs are what you want.  Big fat pegs are slightly redundant as if you can place them the chances are you could place some hammerless pro.  Short thin pegs are lighter so you can carry more of them, they can be easily stacked and are less likely to get stuck and become litter.  The lightest pegs are angles and blades.  The Black Diamond Lost Arrows/Grivel Top pegs are heavy but it's worth having a couple as they seem to fit strange British rock well.   
It is possible to use other novelty aid climbing gear as protection.  Birdbeaks, copperheads, micro wires and all sorts have been used Scottish winter climbing but we would not rush to recommend them. Outside Range of Pegs

Snow

Most of the time snow 'protection' is little more than psychological. After snow bollards and axe belays there are really only two ways to create a belay in snow and they are both fairly unreliable.

Deadmen
Deadmen need to be placed properly to work.  Unfortunately most people have never seriously thought about how to place them and then gone out, experimented and held some practise falls.  Deadmen are very heavy and fairly cumbersome so if you don’t know how to place it, it's probably not worth carrying it.  On the other hand, if you are prepared to invest some time in understanding how they work, they can make a considerable psychological if not practical difference.

Snow Stakes
Shaped like an 'I' beam with one part of the 'I' wider than the other. Stakes are supposedly not as effective as Deadmen if the Deadmen is place correctly. However, a snow stake works on the same principle as a tent peg and is for most people therefore easier to place. It is also faster to place, basically involving some hammering. Other advantages over Deadmen include the fact that it can be placed in neve which a Deadman cannot be and it can be used on its side to create the horizontal part of a 'T' shape. They weigh about the same as a Deadman 300-400g but they are annoying to carry due to their length.

Ice

Screws

Modern screws are hardy and fast to place. There are several designs on the market but what differentiates them from each other is the hanger and the way they are wound/driven into the ice. It is difficult to say which of the many screws available is better. They all have their advantages. Some ice screws have hangers that rotate which means that you don’t have to unclip the quickdraw from them to wind. Some have big levers that make them a joy to get in and out easily but which can feel awkward on your harness. Some have the winding mechanism incorporated into the hanger. As with so much gear there is always a trade off. Outside Range of Screws

Ice Screw Length and Strength
Ice screws come in roughly four lengths - XS, S, M, L (for Long).
Long ice screws - they weight a lot, take more energy to place, require tying off when they bottom out. They are however good for belays and essential for making ice threads (also called Abolokov threads)
Medium screws should make up most of your rack being a good compromise between weight, usability and quality of protection
Smaller lighter screws should be for extra thin ice or for the placements at the top of the route where the impact forces are less.

Which Way to Place them?
If the ice is good then the best angle to place an ice screw is 15 - 20 degrees below the perpendicular (so that the teeth of the screw are pointing up hill). This seems counter intuitive as you are not using any leverage that would be available if you placed the screw 15- 20 degrees above the perpendicular (so that the teeth are pointing down hill). This is how you should place the screw if the ice is bad however as in this instance you need this effect of leverage. It's beyond this article to explain more about this however if you wish to know more there is an excellent short film on the Black Diamond Website.

Hammer in screws
No one really uses these any more. They are not as good as wind in screws that bite, cant be placed one handed and are hard to remove. We don’t even know anyone who makes them anymore. They work by hammering in and twisting out (ragging out). Simple. Their only possible advantage is that they can be bashed into places where there is not enough space for the hanger to rotate on a normal screw, ie a corner. However crud hooks now fill this gap in the climbers rack.

Hooks
Crud hooks like the Black Diamond Spectre offer a multitude of placements and are not just for crud. They can go wherever your pick can and this offers a great deal of flexibility. They are especially useful for turf in Scotland, and though they cant really be recommended for taking falls onto, they are very useful on hard to construct belays and for hammering into iced up cracks.
Warthogs
Hammer in, screw out pegs that can prove useful if you are climbing chalk! They can be occasionally useful in Scotland for muddy cracks and turf but little or no use when continental ice climbing.

Screamer/Ripper Slings

These really do make a difference. As you get higher on a route, with all the stretch in the ropes, the impact forces are greatly reduced. This means that ideally, low down, you should use any gear you place with screamers as this will vastly improve the chances of your protection not failing. Higher up this becomes less of a problem. However any marginal gear can always benefit from the use of Screamers. Screamers work by having stitching that rips, reducing the impact force on you placements dramatically. You have to bin them after they have been used but this is a small price to pay for something which goes such a long way to keeping you alive. Outside Screamer Range

Not protection but worth a mention. A Russian climber called Abalakov came up with the idea of using a two ice screws to create a V groove and then threading cord through the V groove using a thin metal stick with a hook on the end. This cord could then be abseiled from and the rope recovered. There are many different types of Abolkov threader. The Grivel Candela is excellent being light weight and also having a blade that absail tat can be cut with. For more tips on Abalakov threads and retreat options using ice visit Andy Kirkpatricks website Pyschovertical/iceanchors.

Image © Brian Goldstone, Arcteryx