UKC

Hi - does anyone know if there are any indoor ice climbing walls in England? I believe the Vertical Chill ones are permanently closed.
Thanks.

In reply to Sidrun:

Good riddance to them. Anyone wanting to ice climb should think carefully about minimising their co2 emission. The only entertainment that scores lower than indoor ice climbing imo is indoor sky diving! There is a time and place for ice climbing and it’s not long to wait now. 

In reply to mutt:

Show your working please. 

In reply to TheGeneralist:

All gone out of business because the price of. Electricity makes it too costly. 12 quid a go then at £12/0.254£/kwr  = 50 kwhr per customer

0.20707 kg CO2e per kWh Is the 2022 figure so each customer emits 10 kg of co2e per session to an order of magnitude. 
 

dry tooling at your local gym 0kgs of co2e. If they don’t have the facilities then ask for them at the desk. (Transport emissions being the same)
 

the calculation for indoor freefalling is broadly the same except they charge more like £30 a flight so 3times as obnoxious. their costs are absolutely governed by electricity.
 

and yes I know there are other costs but I don’t see any other climbing facilities closing down due to energy costs. Consequently I conclude that the electricity is the major cost of the artificial ice wall. 
 

 

In reply to TheGeneralist:

My premises of course is that sports that require engines  are invalid. For instance sailing is a sport but power boat racing is invalid. Running is a sport but car racing is invalid. Cycling is a sport but motor cycle racing is invalid.

if one needs a engine or power hookup to be competitive then perhaps one needs to grow some.

just a personal viewpoint. Many would disagree. 

In reply to mutt:

Wow.  Going in this hard with a sneeringly sanctimonious 'carbon footprint' argument when you have an active thread of your own right now asking for recommendations for places you can fly to for a week of winter sunshine.  I'm embarrassed for you.

In reply to TheGeneralist:

Ooh.  I found this and I can't resist posting it because it fits my prejudices so perfectly.

The biggest culprit is, unsurprisingly enough, transport to go and participate in a sport elsewhere - for example, in an act of wild hyprocrisy, hopping on a plane for a week's climbing in November somewhere warmer than Costa Blanca.

But if you look at the sport itself, indoor ice climbing isn't the second-worst after sky-diving, it's golf.  Fecking golf!  I knew it!

https://carbonliteracy.com/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-sport/

"According to a 2018 study in Germany, the average annual carbon footprint for individual sports was around 1006 kg CO2e, while for an individual participating in team sports was 514 kg CO2e. Sport-specific comparisons show skydiving has the highest carbon footprint (2,841kg CO2e), followed by golf (2,195 kg CO2e). Ironically, golf, which may seem green from the outside, has a considerable environmental impact. An average golf course in the US has an annual carbon footprint of approximately 796,577 CO2e, most of which comes from energy consumption and the manufacture, transport and application of pesticides on the grounds."

In reply to Sidrun:

Classic ukc, an innocent question is asked and immediately jumped upon by Swampy Thunderbird.

To answer your question, I don't know if any still in existence. The one local to me closed years ago. From what I recall, it was a well insulated facility, costing little once at temperature.

Ice walls fail to serve climbers effectively, they are too short to provide any level of training other than learning the basics. If you do laps to counter this, you just end up hooking and may as well be on a ladder.

Best served for family days out or experience days for stag and hen dos. This is the audience that will get the most out of them.

In reply to deepsoup:

With all of those yearly figures being lower than many of the single flights being proposed to mutt in his other thread! You couldn't make it up.

In reply to mutt:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/destinations/winter_sun_climbing_destinat... 
 

This you?

In reply to deepsoup:

I like your post but just like to add that golf persay doesn't have to have a large carbon footprint.

Golf in the US uses precious water to keep greens green is a shocking waste of resources in other areas too. However in the UK where water is not a problem golf can be a lot greener. Aside from the fairways there is ample scope for using the roughs to sequester carbon in the form of trees and be environmently friendly providing habitat for wildlife.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

I wasn't being 100% serious there.  (Wasn't 100% joking either mind.)

Don't especially want to derail this thread (not that we'd be losing much at this point), and I'm not really up for a debate right now, but on this point at least:

I think you're a bit behind the times here.  We've just had a bit of a soggy summer by recent standards, but water is a problem in the UK and the current trend is very much towards it becoming more so.

Eg: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-65928250

In reply to Sidrun:

Unfortunately not many around, there was the vertical chill one as mentioned which is now gone. There were also ones in Ellis Brigham in Manchester, Birmingham and London which I think have all now closed. The walls not the shops themselves.

Besides this I do still inspect a couple of military climbing walls which have foam ice walls. But unfortunately also don't get much use.

There is a new guide for all dry-tooling crags though. So maybe as close as you can get.

In reply to deepsoup:

Fair enough.

In reply to mutt:

The Ice Factor in Kinlochleven is built inside the hydro electric power plant - that's a clue,

In reply to timparkin:

erm - isn't Kinlochleven in Scotland? I think the OP was asking about Ice Climbing walls in England. 

But none-the-less IMO, and as stated by others above, indoor ice climbing  offers nothing to the climbing community. If Indoor ice climbing walls exists at all they are an invented passtime that wouldn't exist but for abundant cheap electricity. ( and the same is true of indoor freefall). 

Unfortunately that energy is not consequence free until we are 100% decarbonised. Now is not the time to invent pass-times that make additional demands on the limited supply of sustainable electricity.

I don't know if this is true for Kinlochleven, it may be great, but even if Hydro-electricity is abundant in that locale I think the wider community could definately make better use of what must be a limited supply. Wouldn't it be better used to run a railway or something and draw a few less kwh's from a petrochemical or wood burning power station?

In reply to timparkin:

Wasn't it an Aluminum Smelter?

On a related note - one of the top google hits for the Ice Factor is the judgement against them in an employment tribunal in July. From the judgement it looks like the former owners didn't even bother showing up to contest it.

In reply to mutt:

As stated by others above indoor ice climbing doesn't have much to offer experienced ice climbers - that doesn't mean it's worthless, especially to beginners.

Your comparison between indoor ice and indoor skydiving is ridiculous.  Those massive fans draw the best part of a megawatt while they're running.  Chilling (or heating) a well insulated indoor space doesn't come close.  Indoor ice climbing is very niche, but horizontal indoor ice is very common and seems to be reasonably sustainable.  (Helped by the fact that maintaining horizontal ice in good condition for skating is relatively quick and easy - a more serious problem for indoor ice climbing than energy costs is that maintaining the ice is time consuming and labour intensive.  The same was true for ice rinks before Frank Zamboni invented his machine.)

Leisure facilities have been closing down because of the cost of energy over the last few years, and overwhelmingly those facilities have been swimming pools.  If you want to go off on a tangent to rant about the carbon footprint of leisure facilities, it would make more sense to direct your ire at swimmers than would-be indoor ice climbers.

I'm genuinely gobsmacked that you've had the brass neck to come back to this thread given your staggering hypocrisy.  You and the missus jetting off somewhere warmer than Costa Blanca for her to lounge by the pool and you to climb in the sunshine isn't "consequence free" either is it?

Regarding the carbon footprint of someone who fancies having a go at ice climbing, how do you think visiting an indoor ice wall (if one existed) for a few sessions would compare to hopping on a short-haul flight to the Alps for a weekend?  Will you be doing that as well this winter, after you've had your nice holiday in the sun?

In reply to deepsoup:

firstly, you really are very basic and predictable. I can't be bothered to write why so I'll post this link in the hope that you or others will read it 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josp.12522?msockid=3a7c258a2db4...

section 2 is a bit easier to read than the abstract so I suggest you go straight to  that. 

secondly, you are so easily triggered! I am merely celebrating the demise of a industry that no one wanted anyway. I'm not advocating that you change or anything so significant to you. Don't be such a baby.

In reply to mutt:

Having read your rather ironic link which of the six models of hypocrisy do you most identify with?

In reply to wbo2:

I guess without deconstructing the whole issue the charge of hypocrisy is impossible to refute as we all live in an imperfect world. It’s not possible at present to be virtuous enough to post any statement at all on environmental issues to appease those who reject all such messages. 
 

deeps**t would jump on anything vaguely (and this particular post is very insignificant) environmental, coming armed with the inevitable charge of not being perfect. 
 

it’s his way of shutting down any advocating of decarbonisation. 
 

But let’s examine this particular post. I state that indoor ice climbing is abhorrent. A real hypocrite would state that whilst simultaneously hacking their way up an artificial ice pillar behind the scenes. Deeps*t being unable to state that just escalated straight to my choice to accept the status quo and fly occasionally. 
 

If that is an acceptable position to take on my hypocrisy then we must also disregard all statements by the intergovernmental commission on climate change as they all flew to Kyoto. 
 

he’s talking shite
 

In reply to mutt:

Ah my apologies .. it's not open anyway so ... 

hmm... you could say that about about most 'invented pastimes' (one s)

How does hydroelectric power create carbon dioxide? 

The electrical system is limited by distribution, not by generation. Local use is 'excess' as far as I am aware. 

In reply to planetmarshall:

Yes - but aluminium smelters are essentially mostly hydro power plants. 

The owners displayed a really disappointing lack of ethics in many, many ways. 

In reply to mutt:

Your are Donald Trump and I claim my £5!

In reply to mutt:

I'll reply to both your latest posts together I think.

Ha - hardly!  For non academic social philosphers, here's a link to something much more readable that you might have posted instead if you'd been less concerned about cherry-picking something opaque enough to hide behind.

https://theconversation.com/are-you-a-climate-change-hypocrite-heres-why-yo...

I fully understand and agree with the idea that accusations of 'climate hypocrisy' run the risk of playing into the hands of climate change deniers, and indeed that they're sometimes deliberately used as part of a cynical strategy by climate change deniers.  (Which I'm not, btw.)

You're the one who's getting upset, and you're projecting.  I'm not triggered at all; the only emotional response I'm experiencing as a result of reading your posts is a kind of vicarious embarrassment.   Well, now that you've made it personal by chucking insults at me, perhaps also tinged with a bit of schadenfreude that you're making such a tit of yourself to be completely honest.

Yes, lets - you stated that without evidence and have yet to produce any.  Way up at the top of the thread you were asked to please show your workings, please do.

I wouldn't go so far as to say 'abhorrent', but I think indoor skydiving is probably unjustifiable.  On the other hand I think ice skating is probably fine, and it seems pretty obvious to me that indoor ice climbing has more in common with that than skydiving.

A real hypocrite would say "anyone wanting to [ice] climb should think carefully about minimising their co2 emission" whilst booking a long haul flight to go climbing.  That's quite specific enough.

In reply to Sidrun:

I bet you wish you'd never asked.

In reply to timparkin:

I'm not sure where you're going with this.  Aluminium smelters use huge amounts of electricity, the premises of a former aluminium smelter being re-purposed as an indoor climbing wall doesn't necessarily imply that the climbing wall does too.

In reply to deepsoup:

Carbon emissions are a necessary and therefore acceptable evil if it's the result of something you value. 

If it's a result of something that somebody else values but you don't then it's just evil and those that value the activity are morons.

In reply to montyjohn:

There may be some truth in that, but then again it depends doesn't it? 

Yes, to a certain extent we are all hypocrites when it comes to climate change, but this is the 'climate hypocrisy' that's addressed in the article I linked to above, or if you're academically minded and can be arsed to wade through a lot of verybiglongwords, the link that mutt posted. 

Seizing on that hypocrisy may play into the hands of climate change deniers, or may indeed be a cynical ploy by climate change deniers.

That isn't the kind of hypocrisy you'd exhibit by criticising something for having an "abhorrent" carbon footprint whilst simultaneously engaging in the same activity with an even bigger carbon footprint.  (eg:  Sneering at someone who wants to climb in a giant walk-in freezer for a couple of hours, whilst booking a long-haul flight to go and climb in warm sunshine for a week.)

In reply to stuartholmes:

Thank you - are you aware of any drytooling places in London? Most posts that I can find are 15 years old and information out of date. 

In reply to deepsoup:

Discovering the inventor of the ice resurfacing machine came from Eureka, Utah has cheered me up just a little. Thank you!

In reply to flaneur:

I didn't know that either, but I'm a bit surprised now that more inventors didn't come from Eureka. 🙂

In reply to deepsoup:

I've always wondered why more don't come from New Invention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Invention,_Shropshire

In reply to Sidrun:

I suspect the real reason these indoor ice climbing ventures have failed is lack of sufficient demand to cover their costs. Several of them were run as part of indoor ski slopes, where the additional energy costs must have been trivial compared with the skiing. However they would have had to employ several additional members of staff, and these would need specialist qualifications and couldn't simply be brought in when needed from other parts of the venue. 

In most parts of the country there probably aren't enough ice climbers keen enough to pay considerably more than a normal climbing wall session for what, as has already been pointed out, isn't really adequate for serious training. Any experienced ice climber would soon get bored. It is notable that the longest-lived of them, Ice Factor at Kinlochleven, benefited from having a large number of bored visiting ice climbers frustrated by typical crap Scottish weather, but even that eventually closed, and seems to have only survived as long as it did by not paying its rent. It remains to be seen whether it will re-open.

There was briefly one near Castleford, part of an indoor ski slope. I visited it once. This was maybe 20 years ago. Even then it cost £30 for an hour, although that was for an induction and I think future visits would have been less.  However that bought me a belayer for an hour, and as an opening promotion I was presented with a good-quality technical tee-shirt retailing at £29.99, so overall it was good value. However I was the only person there, possibly the only one that day, and the two or three staff were mostly twiddling their thumbs. I wasn't surprised when it soon closed.

In reply to Sidrun:

Not hugely helpful of me as a long way from London, but I was indoor climbing at Kong in Keswick this week and a guy there was climbing with wooden axes / drytooling the normal routes.