Today I was out looking for thick ice while testing a the latest ultra lightweight Petzl Gully hammer with the new Petzl Sum'tec ice axe.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Petzl hammer's thin pick easily penetrated the water ice despite it's ridiculous low weight (280 grams).
I didn't get a chance to try the hammer and it's maybe not the tool for hard mixed, extreme ice and dry tooling but for general mountaineering on snow and ice it works really well.
The Petzl Gully is sold mainly as a steep skiing snow gully/couloir tool but when reviewing the hammer I found it was equally well suited to easy ice climbing on some steep ice bulges especially when paired with the slightly heavier and more robust Sum'tec mountaineering axe.
Quite worrying approach over any hard snow towards 'Mhearad's Fall' due to avoidable depth hoar or facets, so I am told, unless of course you are trying to access the ice route but being able to plunge the Sum'tec into the ground below gave added confidence!
Once on the ice it was nice, relatively safe and really enjoyable. With a brief freeze thaw it'll get even better unless it all melts OR gets buried by lots of fresh snow ;-)
Bespoke Guiding and ice climbing on Cairngorm's 'hidden Alpine Face' routes can be booked online here >>>
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