Ice climbing in Wyoming
Aaron Mulkey spends his winter months in the mountains around Cody, Wyoming searching for hidden treasure. For him, treasure comes in the form of frozen waterfalls - which he then climbs, using nothing but ice axes, agility, strength and bravery.
To have the opportunity to film such an ice climbing explorer was thrilling, exhausting, chilly and a privilege.
This area of Wyoming is one of the best places in the USA for ice climbing, and the waterfall Aaron had chosen to climb cascades down a sheer face of Pilot Peak - a 40 minute snow-shoe trek from our vehicles. Between the 5 of us we hauled sledges containing rope access kit, cameras, tripods, sound kit and a drone. It was hard work - there wasn’t a clear path through the knee deep snow, and one of the sledges had a mind of its own – every few steps it flipped over or got wrapped the wrong side around a tree. But the scenery was breath-taking and there was an eerie silence amongst the snow-covered fir trees (aside from our exhausted panting!).
At the cliff face the waterfall towered 40ft above us. We could hear the sound of trickling water but strangely couldn’t see it, just a huge wall of ice where a waterfall was frozen in time.
As Aaron climbs, he first kicks his legs to engage the front points of his crampons in the ice, and then swings his axe in the ice above his head – both sending showers of ice splinters flying. Then, like a thermal-clad Spiderman, he almost effortlessly speeds up the waterfall – “it’s all in the legs” he casually adds as he disappears up the frozen, vertical wall. Occasionally his axe would hit bleached white ice, there was a crack as it broke off and crashed to the ground. Other times he hit a perfect blue pocket of ice and his anchor was secure.
He was roped to his climbing partner (Justin) who remained on the ground and fed the rope through a belay system. This would prevent Aaron from falling too far in case of a slip, provided that the precarious ice screws he was roped too stayed secure; “for every one of these that have stayed in, I know another one that has failed” Aaron jokes. At the bottom, along with dodging falling shards of ice, Justin’s other role was also to throw sticks for Goose, Aaron’s enthusiastic Labrador!
In order to film Aaron, our rope-access specialist Tim Fogg rigged a separate rope system parallel to Aaron for our camera operator Ted Giffords. Tim & Ted clambered into position – along with the camera - using a variety of carabiners and pulley systems, and filmed Aaron as he scampered past them.
Finally once all our ropes had been removed, and we were hidden away amongst the trees, Doug Gardner used his drone to film Aaron. Flying hundreds of feet away set Aaron perfectly against this massive wilderness backdrop – a lone dot of colour, hanging on a chunk of ice, itself tumbling down a cliff face and dwarfed by the huge mountains of the Rockies. It was an experience I will never forget – and something I hadn’t imagined when I first started working on a film about the muddy Mississippi!
By Helen Bishop, Production Coordinator
