All About Drytooling with Kevin Lindlau

At the Michigan Ice Fest we were fortunate to have a long conversation with professional and competition climber Kevin Lindlau about all things ice, mixed, and drytooling.  Kevin is very well spoken. We realized that many people would love to see that conversation to learn more about these specialized niches of the climbing world.  We talked about gear, movement, drytooling holds, and training, among other things. It’s a mountain of information and we’re grateful to be able to present most of it here.

Convo 1 - Gear, Gear Mods, Rope and Gear Damage

Convo 2 - Movement, Hand Positions, The Most Difficult Thing About Drytooling

Convo 3 - Training, Drytooling HOlds, and Comp Route Setting

These conversations have been heavily edited for clarity and brevity.  They are presented in no particular order. Use the topic headings to jump around the conversation.

How does a Climber Learn Pick Feedback?

Simple: Time on the tools and practice. There are a lot of different types of rock out therefore and a lot of different types of drytooling, which results in a lot of different techniques that need to be used on different terrain. To gather the knowledge of how to use your tools on all of these rock types, you need to get on actual rock.  You also need to learn how the different grip positions perform on those rock types and how to utilize those grip positions to effectively. This is very difficult because you just have to get out there and do it. If you don't have the ability to travel around the world to try all these different drytooling rock types, an easy way to gain an understanding of how your tools function and what they would feel like on rock is to drytool on a home woody. With that you’ll need drytooling holds, like the F-Line series from Furnace Industries.

The more different types of features that you can get your tools on, the more of an understanding you'll gain of how your tools function on different shaped objects, and on different textures. All of this is what we call ‘pick feedback’.

With rock climbing, getting feedback is easy. We're can use our fingers to actually feel the texture of the rock. When you're using a metal object to climb, you don't have that luxury of physically feeling what the pick is grabbing.

Think of a record player.  When you drop the needle on a record, the needle goes over little bumps resulting in different vibrations producing the sound. It’s similar with an ice tool. We use the tool as an extension of our body. When I get onto a new rock type, I put very little weight on the tool, scratching around and pushing the pick on the rock to get an understanding of the texture of the rock. That way I feel the vibrations through the tool that is acting as the ‘needle’ so I can feel what the pick is grabbing.

The challenge is to understand those vibrations through the metal into our hands to grasp what we're actually climbing. At home, if you're able to get some dry tooling holds, this is a great way to start to practice and feel what the good, usable surfaces of the holds feel like when you place your tools onto them. Then you can apply those skills that you learned in a controlled environment at home to the outdoors and you’ll start to see connections between the indoor drytooling holds and the outdoor rock.

There is only so much you can do to learn these skills indoor. At some point, you need to go outside to transfer those skills to the rock. Go outside and find a boulder and just kind of gently let your tool scratch across it and feel.  Don’t look at it, but feel around and sense the vibrations. Aluminum tools are great for this. You’ll tend to get more reverberation down the shaft through aluminum than a carbon tool. The more time you can play around on real rock, the better.

So, find somewhere you can go scratch around low down to the ground, kind of like if you were going out and practicing building anchors.  It will greatly accelerate your drytooling skills.

Specialized Drytooling Movement

There is a lot of specialized movement that we could talk about for hours and hours. Let’s just focus on the difference between rock climbing and ice climbing movement.

A lot of us get caught up in the A-Frame idea when we learn to ice climb. It's popular to teach the A-frame position, which is when we're hanging on one tool above with both feet wider out, giving us a stable platform to stand on. This method is often counterproductive when drytooling because we need to be able to move our hips around to maintain certain pick angles on the rock to keep the picks and front points engaged. We have to switch our mindset to more rock climbing movement. For example, use drop knees to rotate our hips in towards the rock and change our center of gravity. That's going to instantly increase drytooling performance on the rock.

Common Outdoor Drytooling Holds

Like rock climbing, drytooling movement is dictated by the holds. The four most basic holds that we'll find when drytooling outside are a straight pull down on an edge or a pocket, cracks, yongaups (hooks), and steinpulls.

Straight Down Pull
In a straight down pull, you’ll have your pick perpendicular to the rock, pulling straight down towards the ground, just as if you were hanging on ice.

Crack
Another common hold is a crack. To engage your pick in a crack not larger than the width of the pick, put it in and twist, or torque, your pick into the crack. This is a very common hold that immediately requires a shift out of that A-Frame position to a more dynamic position to keeps leverage on the pick.

Yongaup (Hooks)
Yongaup is the Korean word for a kind of hooking maneuver that's often used on the competition circuit. These hooks involve turning the pick parallel to the rock and hooking it over a hold. You're hooking your pick on a hold parallel to the rock as opposed to perpendicular to the rock. This allows you to use horn features and columns that normally wouldn't be usable by pulling straight down on your picks.

Steinpulls
Another common hold that we'll see outdoor drytooling is a steinpull.  The original version is where you turn your tool upside down and use the tool like a crowbar. The further back you keep your hands on the tool, the more leverage you'll create. Exactly like a crowbar. But there is more to Steinpulls because you can actually use them in a 360° range of motion. When you start to get into overhanging terrain, you can start to think of our using the tool in a ‘spherical orientation’, not just upside down but also sideways, up, left, right, down…. So now a steinpull actually refers to any move where the head and beak of the tool engage on the rock, and requiring constant tension to be on the first or second grip positions to keep the pick engaged. So that's a little complicated, but hopefully the photos help.

These are some of the most common holds and movements we'll see. There's a lot more, and it gets way more advanced, but I think that's what people need to know to get going.

DTS vs Yaniro

These styles usually refer to roof climbing, but they can also be used on vertical walls. DTS stands for DryTool Style, also previously known as French Style and eschews the use of Figure 4’s and Figure 9’s. Using Figure 4’s and Figure 9’s is sometimes referred to as Yaniro style. In the history of our sport, there's a few different stories of how this all evolved, but climbers decided to challenge themselves by not using Figure 4’s, but instead to keep feet on the rock. DTS style is difficult and today there are purist DTS-ers, where they'll refuse to use Figure 4’s or Figure 9’s.

Then there are roof climbers that use only Figure 4’s/9’s.  A Figure 4 is when you’re hanging one tool and put your opposite leg over the arm. You hook it over, creating what looks like a ‘4’ with your body. The back of the knee must be as close to the wrist as possible.  This allows you to efficiently hang on the tool by one hand. A figure 9 is the same leg over the same side arm hanging by one hand.

A lot of people have gone to using only one or the other, DTS or Yaniro. They pick a side like: “I'm only a DTS climber” or “I'm only a Figure 4/9 a Yaniro climber”. I think this is a really bad route for our sport to be going. It's creating grudges within our sport and between communities. But the thing is, it's very inefficient if you use only one or the other. Just like rock climbing, we use all the skills that we’ve learned to get up the rock as easily as possible. Drytooling is no different.

If you choose to only use one of these styles of climbing, at some point you'll hinder yourself on whichever route you're climbing. I think the most effective climbers are the one who are able to utilize both of these styles effectively. A lot of climbers have tried to impose a certain value on the style of an ascent, but here that doesn’t make sense. Saying you shouldn't use figure 4’s is like saying you shouldn't be able to use knee bar rock climbing. With that logic, why would you say using good technique is a bad thing? Why would you make it harder for yourself?

Having two bipartisan ideas of styles for the sport is bad and will hinder progression in the sport. I think the best climbers utilize both styles. Like this guy Mateo in Italy. The routes that he's opening require both styles. It's not physically possible to only use one techniquwe through those climbs. You have to do both Figure 4/9 and DTS moves. You can't only DTS climb those routes. They reached are just too big. I think the future of our sport utilizes both styles.

Hand Positions on the Tools

All tools have two grip positions. The lower grip, or 1st position, is the lowest grip on the tool. Also called the long grip. This is the grip we use for most of our ice climbing. Then there's an upper grip, or 2nd position above the 1st position. Also called the short grip. This grip is on the shaft of the tool. Then above the 2nd position there’s also a 3rd position, sometimes called the ‘death position’, which is the center of the shaft of the tool. When you see new ice and mixed climbers come back with black eyes or cuts under their eyes, often what’s happened is they’ve grabbed that third position of the shaft. This is really dangerous because you’re pulling out on the pick rather than down onto the pick. When we pull out on a tool, tools pop off the rock and hit you in the face. We never want to grab there.

We should always try keep all of our weight engaged on the beak of the pick, which is why we primarily climb in the 1st and 2ndposition, because those positions keep pressure and bodyweight downwards on the pick rather than outwards. In drytooling, the grip positions all have specific purpose to them. However, that starts to get more in depth as far as technique.

Drytooling’s Limits

Right now, the sport is shifting in a good way. There's been a problem with our sport where route grades have gotten more difficult only as the routes have gotten longer, which doesn't make sense because just like in rock climbing, a route is given a grade based on its hardest move.  For example, let's say a there’s two routes: a 30m 5.10c vs 45m 5.10a but with easier climbing. Both are 5.10s, but the longer route has an easier grade because it has easier movement. The length of the route doesn’t affect the grade.

With drytooling, routes have gotten longer and then they've just been given harder grades. But you can't do that forever. You can't suddenly have a 300m route, then give it crazy grade simply because it's so long. The route would likely need to be pitched out anyway. Drytoolers are starting to realize this, that the length shouldn't be the major parameter for difficulty of the route.  Length can be taken into account but it shouldn't be the primary reason why a route is more difficult than another.

Lately the culture has started to switch. Routes are still long, but the rock movement is becoming more difficult, requiring more competition style movement, utilizing terrain that often would have been thought not possible to climb on, requiring more of this advanced style movement to get through it.  This is really cool to see. A lot of this terrain requires use of both DTS and Fig 4/9 style climbing. I think this is a more effective way of advancing the sport because it requires more knowledge of how to use your tools, more knowledge of movement, being able to utilize all the different styles out there. That's what's going to make routes more difficult rather than just making them longer. The sport is in a transition phase at the moment where it's starting to incorporate these new factors and go towards this new combi-style. The next 3-4 years are going to be really cool to see where the sport goes.

Kevin’s Hardest Moves to Dial In

For me there are 2 different hard moves for 2 different disciplines that are the hardest to dial in.

1. Competition drytooling is a different sport in itself. A lot of that movement we often don't see outdoors. There's a lot of very specific things to learn, and I think the hardest one is learning how to maintain pick angle on both tools in different orientations while moving your body around those tools. What we’re talking about here is body tension and it was difficult to learn.  When we’re rock climbing, when we grab the next hold, we lose tension on the previous hold. We commit weight to that next hold. You can't do that in competition drytooling because angles of tools on the holds are so important for engagement on the holds. If you lose tension on one tool, that causes your other tool to shift angles, then you to pop.  

2. Learning how to roof climb and create a sequence that was effective in the roof was probably of the most challenging things for outdoors. Climbers usually find Fig 4/9 climbing to be the most difficult thing to master. It’s a physical challenge and also a big mental head game. Hanging on one hand upside down is very disorienting. Then to learning how to link moves out of inverted positions is very hard. Reading beta while in Fig 4/9’s and climbing on roof terrain is almost a different sport in itself.

Also learning how to understand rock types outside and reading the routes was one of the most difficult things to learn as far as movement, and it’s still ongoing.

How to retrieve a stuck tool

We don’t use tethers when drytooling since they just get in the way of all the wacky movement. So when you fall and the tool stays up on the rock, it has to be retrieved somehow. This is always a struggle. There are many different ways of doing this. Usually, we throw stuff at them if it's close enough and in range. We’ll throw rocks or ice chunks, shoes or gloves trying to hit the tool and knock it off the roof. If the tool is hopelessly wedged in a crack, you have to jug back up the rope it to go retrieve it.

We’ve also played around with some silly ways of getting tools down. We started bringing slingshots with us and shooting snowballs and rocks at the tools to get them down.  This kind of started as a joke, but obviously you have to be pretty careful. Be aware of other people. Shoot into a safe area and know that when shoot stuff into a roof it can ricochet back down at you. That was just one of the sillier methods we played with. Most of the time, these methods don’t work and you just need to sack up and ascend the rope to go get the tool.

Do the tools get damaged?

Yes. Depending on how fall the tool falls if you drop one or it’s stuck and you knock it free, there is usually damage to the tool. But tools are built to be very robust. Tools will get scratches and dents in the shaft, but it usually doesn't cause any real damage and they're fine to climb on. I prefer to climb on aluminum tools for exactly this reason. Aluminum tools are very robust. I've dropped my Black Diamond Fuels from 80ft up into talus fields multiple times. There are big dings in them and they're totally fine. It’s been about 8 years of use and abuse, and those tools are totally okay. They have ¼” dents in the shaft, no problem whatsoever.

With a carbon tool, you have to be very careful when you drop it. If you hit rock or it takes a blunt hit, it can cause cracks within the carbon that you might not see and could become catastrophic and lead to failure of the tool later on.  It’s the big downside of carbon. You need to be really cautious. The performance benefits of a carbon fiber tool are extra stiffness and lightness. That's why most of us compete with a carbon fiber tool. A carbon tool is something that's going to give us that next level edge as far as equipment goes. But you have to be aware that you're risking damaging your tool if you're planning to abuse it outside. When we go out to climb outdoors, we'll switch to a more standard stock tool like a Fuel, a Petzl Nomic or Ergonomic, or a CAMP X-Dream. Something that can actually take the abuse of real life climbing, usually with a stock pick, like an ice pick or mixed pick, depending on what you're climbing.

Pick Selection

There's a lot of variables regarding pick selection. If I'm doing a mixed climb where I'm actually going to have to climb ice. I'll probably use a mixed pick as opposed to a dry or an ice pick. I want the best of both worlds. It's going to have an angle that sits in the middle of those two. It's not super aggressive like a drytooling pick, but it's not very shallow like an ice climbing pick. In this case a mixed pick will give me extra performance on the rock. I'll going to lose a little performance on the ice, but it's manageable.

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If I'm just doing a drytooling route I’d get something with a steeper pick, like a Petzl Pure Dry Pick, or the CAMP Race Pick that has a nice beak on it. If I'm doing just an ice climb then I'm going to use an ice pick because it's going to give me the best performance on the ice.

Protective Eyewear

Protecting one’s eyes is always recommended. Ice can hold a lot of tension and it can shoot backwards when you swing into it. Sometimes when you swing into ice, tension is released when the pick penetrates the ice. That can cause the ice to literally blow up in your face with shards of ice. You can injure your eye, so you have to be careful.

Click HERE for Protective Eyewear

Drytooling is usually reserved for the chossiest of crags, which results in a lot of rock, dirt, and gunk falling as you climb on it. That stuff inevitably falls in your face because you're climbing underneath it while looking up at it. To mitigate the risk of any eye damage, it is wise to wear safety glasses. Sometimes glasses can fog up and cause some issues, so it's a personal preference, but recommended for sure.

Ed Note: If you’re practicing drytooling on wood blocks or (eek) resin at home, eyewear is definitely recommended.  Eye splinters should not have a chapter in the next drytooling manual.

Drytooling Season

Depending on the crag, you can go drytooling anytime of year. Drytooling season is more similar to rock climbing for desirable conditions than it is to ice climbing. It’s possible to drytool throughout the winter. We try not to go out when it's -10°F, but we try to find a day where it's 20 degrees out and it's sunny at a south facing crag. Like rock climbing we try to usually climb in the shoulder seasons.  Spring and fall tend to be prime time for drytooling because the temperatures are down so you're not sweating as much, which means you don’t fall off the tool as easily. Also, warm temps mean hands don't freeze in the thin gloves used for drytooling.

Know Your Drytooling Crag

An extremely important consideration is to know the area you're climbing, what the climbs require, and what the stewards of those areas recommend. For example, if you're climbing in Hyalite Canyon or the Catskills of NY, the rock is so chossy that a lot of the holds actually need to be frozen into place to stay on the wall. If you were to go climb some of these routes in the summer, you would actually destroy the route, not to mention the risk of rockfall.

Some of those climbs are reserved purely for midwinter climbing when the holds are frozen in place. You need to know where you're going climbing, ask people for beta on the area, and learn the local ethics.

The Most Difficult Thing About Drytooling

The most difficult thing with drytooling and mixed climbing is risk management and mitigation. Drytooling areas are often reserved for the chossiest of crags, which are extremely dangerous areas. As the sport is getting more popular, I don't think people understand as they transition from the gym to rock to mixed climbing and drytooling that there is so much more loose rock. When opening new routes climbers should try to clean the routes by removing loose rock that could be dangerous or a hazard.

Even with those cleaning efforts, these areas are so chossy and loose that every year there is a freeze thaw cycle in a lot of these mixed climbing regions. That means water goes behind this chossy rock, freezes and expands, loosening the rock. In the spring, when it melts, you now have a loose block that might not have been loose the year before.

You have to be constantly vigilant. What the rock quality looks like, what you're using. If it's loose, you have to use common sense. If a rock looks like it might fall, it could injure your belayer, it could injure you, it might hit and cut your rope. There are so many risks you need to manage.

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