"Alpine" ice

What do you picture when you see an "AI" grade?  Or - more generally- what does Alpine Ice mean to you?  The funky gray-white ice that chokes up the corners of Ham and Eggs and the dense, ancient glacier ice on the North Ridge of Mt Baker are both, technically, ice in the alpine but the climbing style and movement patterns are so different that you'd hardly call it the same sport.

I guess I associate Alpine Ice with multi-year glaciation and anything else should get a Water Ice grade. But I've been wrong before, or so I've been told. 

I think of it as just a heads up that it isn't normal WI. On Mt. Hood there is a lot of "AI3" that is essentially rime ice tunneling. In the alps the classic neve pitches with hero sticks but no screws are often listed as AI, but so are the verglas pitches. Glacier ice is also in this category as you said. In the Canadian rockies there are "permanent" (pre-global warming) ice pitches that climbed kinda like glacier ice but weren't actual glaciers, also listed as AI. 

In rock you can have sport climbing on granite friction slab, overhanging limestone tuffas, or vertical crimpy tuff. Nobody ever promised that climbing grades would be equivalent or a complete descriptor of the pitch.

Water fall ice is ephemeral, lasting through the winter. Alpine ice is not. But that is not to say alpine ice lasts year round. 

Waterfall Ice is formed by freeze/thaw. Alpine ice is formed by compression. 

Allen Sanderson wrote:

Water fall ice is ephemeral, lasting through the winter. Alpine ice is not. But that is not to say alpine ice lasts year round. 

So... Schrodinger's ice?

Dallin Carey wrote:

Waterfall Ice is formed by freeze/thaw. Alpine ice is formed by compression. 

Agreed.

WI = drippy freezy

AI = squeezy squeezy snowy squishy

Or, in a Haiku:

Water ice, cold drips

Alpine ice, started as snow

But then it went squish

Allen Sanderson wrote:

Water fall ice is ephemeral, lasting through the winter. Alpine ice is not. But that is not to say alpine ice lasts year round. 

How about spring/fall alpine routes fed by diurnal snowmelt cycles?  Stuff that is bone dry in the winter.  There is a lot of these routes in Alaska.  Probably the Alps too.  Most of those get WI ratings but they definitely aren't winter routes.  

I think I like Sam's description best - basically AI is a catch-all.   I've certainly climbed a lot of steep coulior ice that is about the consistency of a blended margarita that had been put back in the freezer for 15 minutes.  I'd call that AI although it wasn't made by glaciation.  

"Schrodinger's Ice" feels like a pretty fair image...

_Haireball

When I see Alpine Ice or AI all i think about is fun!