Ice Screw Break Tests in Iceland

What are you doing today? Some brake tests. This is my first time, guys. This is fun! So, we are in Iceland. This is Flaugajökull glacier. And we just hiked 45 minutes from the car. And we are going to do brake tests today on ice groups. Glacier ice is a little bit different than waterfall ice. It's a lot older. This ice is several hundred years old. And the grain structure might be slightly different. Waterfall ice forms vertically. Gravity pulls it vertically. So it forms in that orientation. Snow packs into ice in the glaciers. And it forms over much longer time frames. So, what do you guys think of this Flaugajökull ice? It's locked. It's not going anywhere. Let's see if we can build an anchor right here. And then we'll figure out what we want to brake test first. So, we've evaluated how and what we're going to pull. Because we have sun-crusted ice here. We've got some clean blue ice under here. Which is going to be, I guess, our strongest ice, if I'm not mistaken. It's also pretty cool when it's clear, you're able to see either the ice screw in there or the V-thread in there. And we want to pull most of the test today in sheer. I mean, that's the way most people are using this stuff. We might, if we can, pull some stuff in tension. Because occasionally that can happen. If we stick the test in the ceiling here, then we can pull or attach the pulley system to this V-thread we can just put in this chunk of ice here. Which is actually really easy to drill. Especially with the big drill bit we have. Connect the pulleys. There's not much of a distance there. We might even connect the pulleys directly to the line scale. And then we can all just walk on this mostly flat area, pulling the rope. We might sit and pull with the cinders. And that way we don't fall-fall. We just kind of fall backwards a little while we're already sitting. So let's set it all up and see if this goes the way I hope. Well, go in a couple of metric units of this. Terry, you get your holes to line up, isn't it? How did Ryan die? Oh. In the drill bit. Are we certain this is strong enough? A hundred percent. We'll find out, huh? We will test out the theory. Let's do it. Let's do some science. So what we did here, we have a span set that fits in this giant hole from the giant drill bit. And I have this red, I think, Technora or Kevlar 12-braid ropes. Just a bundle of it here. But instead of going into, like, a triangle, I put a little bit more force on this than I wanted. We just kind of did a sliding X. And so it's actually pulling. We would have to break a lot before this comes off. So let's do eight threads. Yeah. Eight threads. But this would recreate something for, like, waterfall ice, when you could only put in a stubby and only maybe tie it off. So I'm pushing the ash core and turning it. And then you really need to be careful. It's kind of grabbing. Now the teeth are in, and I can let it go. You have to be careful if it's, like, you know, loose still. If you let it go, you might drop your screw. But it's in there. And now I do a few more turns with my whole hand. And once it's kind of, let's say, two, three threads in, you open the handle, and you can spin it like this. Does it always poop ice? Yes. Well, sometimes it poops air if the ice is aerated. That's not good ice. All right, so we're testing this ice screw there. It's quite shallow, because sometimes you might encounter thin ice when you're waterfall ice climbing. Would not whip. That would hold body weight. But you also clipped the hanger. I said two. What did you say? I said three. You said three, so we're both super right enough. 2.26. So should we do that again with the tile? I really like this. Actually, that worked perfectly. Yeah, yeah. We've never belayed this. But it's a moving target. Maybe this isn't stretchy, but when we do the V-threads, it will be. So now we tied off the screw. We're still working on thin ice, even though we have ice here. The thickest ice ever. We're imagining this is the thin ice. So now we tied off the screw to try to reduce the leverage. And we're going to see. Do you still have about eight screws in, the same amount? Yeah, it's about the same. But what could happen, this thing might go directly down to the bottom of the screw once we start pulling. But let's see. 6.98. With the tie off. Okay, that's good for it. It didn't slip. You thought it was going to slip, right? Here, we made it much more sheer. There was a cone that discharged. It coned out, yeah. But here, we broke the threads. This is the optimal angle, basically, according to tests from Petzl and lots of other people. But that's in a wall you're temporarily using to temporarily lead climb. Yeah. If you're top-roping clients all day, you're going to want to put them in just straight in, in case they need to pull against the top of that glacier. Yeah, and I have heard of some guides doing it so it actually creates more leverage. So, like, you know, pulling this way. 10 degrees that way. Yeah, just to have more leverage. So, because if the threads melt out, at least you still have the lever pulling against the ice. So, that's our tension, halfway. Whoa! Oh! 3.96. Double of the first one. So, clove hitching it in sheer is going to be way better. Yeah. So, when you're guiding, just don't put in your screws halfway and you'll be good. Well, we don't unless we're ice climbing. Waterfall climbing, which is super rare as well. You have to climb a super sketchy pitch. I've noticed that all ice screws have the same length of thread. Yeah, they all do. And then the shaft is the part that's different. Yeah. Is that just to grab good ice that's deeper in? To reach for the sun crust and the shitty stuff. And the sun crust is this... Yeah. ...chunky stuff, instead of this super smooth blue glacial ice. Is that also on a waterfall? Yeah, you can have the same on a waterfall. The surface can be just kind of crusty shit. You're saying there's only one type of ice and this answers all the questions. No. Let's do the 10 or 20 degrees in the wrong direction. Deep in there and then we'll pull until it breaks. Is that an angle? Yeah. Well, let's see. Let's see what happens. Oh, that's... The snow poop is going down my sleeve. Oh, my God! That was not very strong. Maybe we should listen to the instruction manual. You can see it started breaking the ice in front of it, so it actually didn't rely on the threads. And it started shearing this ice here. So as soon as it breaks a little bit... Yeah, and then it would just angle itself out. So I think, yeah, the best would be... And the threads do nothing after that. They don't. I mean, you can see the damage in the front of it here. I was going to say 6. Did I say 6? I said 6 as well. Well, let's all say 6. 4.65. On the bad, the 20 degrees in the wrong direction. This would be curious with a longer screw. Mike, do you want to put in the straight end? Yeah, yeah, sure. And I do think the strongest would probably be angled 10 degrees towards us. I mean, this is how it's taught across the board in the association. Regardless if you're climbing vertical or top rope anchor. We would never place it. It was always shear force. Yeah. Like, if we do it personally, I still only do perpendicular. I never put 10 degrees toward me. You're doing 2 in the wall, or 2 on top, and you're top roping. Yeah. Is it just naturally because all around here your ice is so good it's irrelevant? Whereas waterfall ice has the more aerated... Could be. But you could have aerated crap here. But it's going to be super rare on the terminus. I mean, we're climbing, it's ice that's moved for hundreds of years. Yeah, yeah. And the SunCrest, you know, the association at least teaches us to clean the surface ice. Yeah, because usually, I mean, we modify our anchor setups to always be perpendicular to the ice and the pole. And the pole. So we always have, like, I rarely have to deal with situations like this. I would just modify or change my... Of what? Screwing something 2 meters off the ground and pulling on it with a 5-to-1 with all your friends? You don't do that every day? Well, this is something we could figure out. It's so fascinating. I think that's what gets me. It's like ice ASMR. Wow, it just fractures. It's already, like, technically coned. Is this your margarita maker? So this guy we're going to break, eh? Yeah. Let's see. This is a proper screw. This is a proper screw and proper ice. This is what we're taught to do, so... Now you guys need to slide your ascenders forward. Wow! That's amazing! I'm more curious about how strong you guys pulled that than the result. I mean, the hanger doesn't look bent at all. But the screw actually bent. Wow, that's interesting. It made me feel better you guys had to pull so hard. Huh. It was properly hard. And it wasn't angled that much different. Yeah. It just made such a huge difference. What happened to the hole? It completely coned out. Oh, you got coned real bad over here. Wow, that's crazy, huh? Man, that was a nice clean break, though. You can see while we were pulling before, there was some ice, like, drizzling down before it broke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every time we yanked on it, there was a little bit of extra motion. Yeah, I mean, there's some breakage here. I think if we do it 10 degrees towards us, we can eliminate some of this, right? Probably. And just get more of the threads. Because here are the threads, there's not much damage here. Oh! 1676. Wow, that's pretty good for a 5-to-1. Or what was that, a 5-to-4? All right, so what's your theory on 20 degrees in the correct direction? I would say probably, I think we're going to go to maybe 20 kilonewtons. Which means, wait, wait, what's the hanger rated for? We've already made it past 16. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the hanger, success, black diamond of making the screw a good job. Do you think the hanger will break if we're getting into the 20 range? I mean, the hanger didn't even show any stretch, right? So this was just a screw. Seeing just how it breaks is almost more important than the number. Let's do 20 degrees in the right direction. This screw is installed properly based on all the manuals I've ever read and what a lot of people are taught. 20 degrees in the direction you're pulling so the threads are doing the work and it's not the leverage against the ice. 3, 2, 1! Oh my god! That was a 5-to-7! It definitely looks straight. So it was probably the threads then. So I think the forces would be higher. Let's check out the hole. It blew out like this part here. Yeah, we might have been a little bit too close to that screw because you can see how the crack goes over here. What's the recommended distance between screws? Screw length, 21 centimeters. About 20 centimeters. That's more than that. Yeah. That's about exactly. 16 foot! What? Wow! It did not bend it. Interesting. I really thought we were going to break some screws. But apparently the screws are just a freaking bummer. More than the ice. Yeah. I have found I trust gear a lot more than I do rock and ice. The more I test stuff in real rock and real ice. And this is good ice. Yeah, yeah. This isn't shit waterfall ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't we do perpendicular 21? You mean a longer screw? Yeah. Yeah, because you're putting the pressure further in. It's not better ice necessarily. You're grabbing deeper ice. You're not going to get it to cone. It'll actually break. I think it'll break this. Janice is giving up one of her long screws. We're all pulling our guts out on this one. I think the hanger is going to break. The screw is so deep buried inside. There's a lot of ice that is supporting the screw. So the reason it's coming out is because it's coning. It's blowing the ice out. Well, it can't really do that if the threads, which are the same length as everything else we've been testing, is deeper in the ice. This is actually an aluminum hanger as opposed to the steel hanger. This is a Petzl. And pull as hard as you can in 3, 2, 1. Man, you guys are better than hydraulics. I am going to laugh if it's 16 kilonewtons. Interesting. 14.32. Really? It was less. The whole benefit of a longer screw is wasted on the aluminum hanger. That's very interesting. Is this how you do science? He's like the science man here. You're compromising the test, man. It's the wrong ice. It's not cold enough when you guys are doing it. But I can assure you it's cold enough. We really want to see if we can get the screw to break or the ice to break or the body to break. We don't know. 3, 2, 1. Do we have more in us? 3, 2, 1. Oh, that's all scratched up. Okay, what else went? Without the fuse, we were pushing the limits of what the screen can do. So 26.34 kilonewtons. I don't know if we had more in us, honestly. I think it's pretty bummer I screwed it. It's just missing the head. It's funny to me it's twice as strong as the hanger. It doesn't wiggle at all. I wonder if it's bent though. This is so bent. It's bent. That's why it won't unspin. So it's interesting. We're getting less strength out of a full depth screw because the hanger broke. But still, 14 kilonewtons is plenty enough for ice climbing situations. I think V-threads is the way to go if you're going to do high lines. But even those will go away after a couple days. What's going on over there? Oh, they're waiting for us. They have something interesting to show us. A little bit bent. Proper banana. Something worth noting is this 22 kilonewton sling is known for its abrasion resistance which is kind of nice on an ice screw the way we're testing it. Went to 26 kilonewtons and it actually looks like it would pass some inspection. It looks like that was the point. That's probably from the teeth before. But it's actually in good shape. So this did not break at 22. Fun fact. So this is a 13 centimeter ice screw. Earlier we had it only partially in. In pretty much just orientation. And this is the last test we're going to do. We're going to clip the inner hole because we're going to be pulling it straight out just to see kind of what that does. Typically you clip here so you have that hole available for a second clip. And I think this is only available on the black diamond ice screws. The pestle ones only have the one hole. Stop. Nope. Stop. Nope. Really coned. So there's nothing wrong with this. Looks straight still. How much force do you guys think you got? 13.84 straight out. In tension that's pretty impressive for a short screw. So we did the longest and then like the shortest rated one. I'd rather have a 10 centimeter screw than nothing in thin ice. If this is holding 16, you know how we put it in it would probably hold 10. Take a whipper off it all day baby. I mean you're not supposed to whip anywhere in ice. So what conclusions can we take away from this? Longer screws have a bigger stress cone and they're stronger. Unless the hanger breaks. Well I learned a lot just how they go in. How they come out. The angles was interesting. I didn't quite believe the 20 degree in the angle you're supposed to be pulling. I don't know. Imagine that. To the right. But it seems like there's not a huge difference between just putting them straight in 90 degrees. Or angling them like the right way. But yeah if you clove hitch a partially installed thing it's like you could almost whip on it. Your ice screw holding is the biggest concern you have while you fall with two ice axes and crampons and ice screws. Don't fall that's the key. Don't fall. So why are we wasting all this time on ice screws if you're not supposed to use them? Because it does happen. Occasionally. In the commercial industry that's what we're using. Like this top roping anchor. Yeah I guess you need an anchor. Because many people just say this is how it is because. And I think today we try to figure out why it's actually like that. What they're rated to. I found them amazing. They're just like bolts you just put anywhere. Without feeling bad. And like then you can access the edge. Make your v-threads and highline. Because that's all I really care about when I'm on a glacier.