Indoor Ice Climbing/Drytooling Holds?!

I've seen an ice axe break nicros and franklin holds. So I'm wondering, does anyone have experience with manufacturing (wood, rock, etc...) them for your garage? or do you buy a particular brand that works well?

I know there is something called "Ice holdz" out there....dont know anything else about them but would also like to hear about holds for drytooling!

I found these.

mrclimbing.com/eng05/drytoo…

I've seen big sheets of foam that is supposed to climb like ice. I think its exspensive, though.

Bent Gate has a small wall of it, so try asking them for a supplier.

Evan

You can screw an incut or slotted piece of wood and hook it. I've even seen people use eyebolts.

Been experimenting with this for quite some time now. There were some concrete made holds that were solid for hooking. Ice Holdz are found at off-belay.com website. The secret thick foam that Nicros and Metolius are selling seems to be a carefully guarded secret as I've not been able to locate or order it cheaply from any building supplies place like Home Depot or Menards. Best of luck.

The foam is VERY hard to clean tools from. Get the Iceholdz. Good swing practice and good drytool features. Nice folks too.

Alpine training center in Boulder has a system board with Iceholdz if you want to try them. thealpinrtrainingcenter.com

I just built a ghetto wall in the garage. I've got some small metolius holds but mostly a lot of wooden holds. I drilled some holes, slots, setup edges and even a couple steinpulls (use plenty of wood screws) and it's good for a pump. I'm going to add some ice holdz too. Eventually I'd like to make the wall nicer but for now scrap wood screwed to the garage framing works well for dry tooling with a 2x4 across the rafters for upsidedown (fig 4, dead hang, pull ups, etc) practice. Eyebolts in the 2x4 work pretty good or you can just hook the top too. The garage doesn't get chewed up and it cost exactly zero dollars to build from scrap wood and old screws except if I buy the ice holdz. It's not much to look at but I figure I can learn what works and what doesn't and apply that to a 4x8 plywood wall later. At the apex of my garage I have 4-5 moves to the ceiling from a sit start on a vertical wall.

Kevin Craig wrote:The foam is VERY hard to clean tools from. Get the Iceholdz. Good swing practice and good drytool features. Nice folks too. Alpine training center in Boulder has a system board with Iceholdz if you want to try them. thealpinrtrainingcenter.com

You got that right. The foam is for slight wrist flick sticks only. Very much wasted time and energy pulling out. But that foam is sweet for feeling secure on all tools.
Regular 2 inch pink or blue construction foam sheets work surprisingly well if you weigh less than 180. When you place them over your wall, be sure to sick some long spikes out of t-nuts so you can find them. I put a few strips of plywood over the foam and it helps hold in place and gives a small edge for your tool to hang on instead of just ripping through the foam each swing. Best of luck.

I just went to cabela's and was looking at the archery targets. They had some that we're stacks of foam and some that were very compressed hay wrapped in burlap. These might be resilient and cheap.

Just another thought

Hi there,
Ever played around on IceHoldz? Made in the USA. Go to iceholdz.com IceHoldz also sells a bomber dry-tooling holds made by Nicros and sold exclusively thru the IceHoldz website.

Check out extreme athlete Tim Emmett on them at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51pArYf9zQ8&feature=c4-overview&list=UUzCpVH1XTMUwIA8yLrnnuEQ

Evan1984 wrote:I just went to cabela's and was looking at the archery targets. They had some that we're stacks of foam and some that were very compressed hay wrapped in burlap. These might be resilient and cheap. Just another thought

Yup, we cut up a Cabalas archery target ($20 bucks) and got 4 or 5 foam holds out of it easily. They last long if you don't crampon on them, just use hand tools. Our farm silo is frozen with water in winter, and covered in epoxy rocks and foam blocks for dry tool season. Pics attached.
silo with foam holds

night ice climbs

Ice on left, foam holds to the right.

I made my wall fairly cheaply out of wood strips screwed to the plywood. I don't try for any sticks, just placements, kind of like a mixed climb. The picks still eat away the cheap wood, but it's lasted so far.

My favorite was screwing 4"x4" wood into the ceiling with LOTS of wood screws. I drilled some pockets for the pics to go into, and now I can traverse out the ceiling pretty well. The only minor downfall is when a pick pops or shears through the wood... or when the whole block pops off the ceiling when you're on it. I have a 10 foot tall garage, so it's an exciting drop. I build these pieces by screwing a 2X4 into the ceiling, then screwing a second 2x4 into that one (otherwise the angle of the pick ends up crushing the drywall on the ceiling) I put pockets between the 2 pieces of wood. I think my next attempt will be to put these into place with TNuts to make them a little less likely to pop.

The other day, I fell off, but the pick remained... I dropped the 10 feet, and landed on my bouldering pad. About 3 seconds later the axe popped, and the pick embedded itself into the pad about 2 inches from my thigh.... at least it wasn't IN my thigh.

hockey pucks cut in half.... deck screws to hold them.....about 1$ for 2 holds! and yes I am Canadian hahahaha

I'm not an ice climber, but one of my favorite hold companies, Atomik, can pour any of their holds as soft or hard ice-feeling holds:

atomikclimbingholds.com/ice…

Saw a pair of these once. Maybe a good idea? Schmoolz

Theriault wrote:hockey pucks cut in half.... deck screws to hold them.....about 1$ for 2 holds! and yes I am Canadian hahahaha

How do you position the hockey puck? Half circle flat side up as an edge? Do you also 'stab' the puck with pics, and do they stick well in the hard rubber? Sounds interesting.

Woodchuck ATC wrote: How do you position the hockey puck? Half circle flat side up as an edge? Do you also 'stab' the puck with pics, and do they stick well in the hard rubber? Sounds interesting.

flat sid up, they can be shaped if the wall is overhanging, but you dont swing in them, they are for drytooling, I got 300$ worth of IceHoldz and sold them, my pucks worked better!

Theriault wrote: flat sid up, they can be shaped if the wall is overhanging, but you dont swing in them, they are for drytooling, I got 300$ worth of IceHoldz and sold them, my pucks worked better!

Ssme here, my IceHoldz were a good tool stick with a big swing, but would not come out at all, and damaged up with as little as 100 sticks. The foam blocks work great for us. Might try the Atomiks and pucks

I just use wood: 2x4 cut into pieces about 10 inches long. I nailed them to an overhanging tree. Pretty cheap! I use them like I'm drytooling.

You can replace the outer shell on the IceHoldz. So if you buy one piece for $16, when you replace the shell on the two part system you pay $8. The small ones (5" x 5") don't last as long as the 7" x 9". The larger ones take up to 2,000 hits.