After 6 years of ice, hard mixed and competition climbing its time for a small review
The ASPEED is a great “do it all” tool for the dedicated sport-mixed climber.
The properties of the Russian made tool makes it a a superb tool in steep terrain on small edges and pockets. This is very imported for competition ice climbing and drytooling. The general shape makes it still a good tool on sportmixed terrain M7 and up. Specially outside where other triple long handled tools become weird and fragile and are no longer useful for use in real rock.
It’s importend to realise that you have to bring right picks for the terrain your aiming for.
We climbed routes up to M14+ in mixed terrain with the mixed pick but the WI7- becomes really hard to climb if you use the competition picks. The original picks are great for competitions and climbed there way up to EU and Worldcup podiums.
For competition climbing the original comp picks with side cheeks make all the difference. They work great on real rock holds steel holds and epoxy holds. But: These picks are horrible to climb real ice with since the tip of the pick is angled almost “back” towards the tool. where the Steinle mixed and ice pick have a less agressieve angle and a “open” tip.
The rubberised handle is relatively thin. This makes it ideal to use a ticker grippy tennis tape to thicken the handle and increase comfort and grip. for the upper handle we use a “overgrip” for tennisrackets. this thinner tape gives good grip but doesn’t thicken the shaft.
The handle is good for small hands or used with thin gloves. When climbing ice routes i would always recommend a good thick glove with knuckle protection. My size Large doesn’t fit in the handle with a tick glove so I prefer other tools for pure Ice climbing.
Wrapping the tool fully in tape also makes it “biteable” and protects the carbon shaft. our tools fell downloads of time on to flat ground rocky surface etc. I’m sure the tennistape wrap gave the necessary additional protection when falling down 30 meters into steep rocky terrain or flat concrete before the tool bounced up from the ground 5+ meters..
So would I recommend the ASPEED? if you want to do loads of sportmixed, competition ice climbing or drytooling absolute YES!
ASPEED Ice rock after 5 years Review
After 6 years of ice, hard mixed and competition climbing its time for a small review
The ASPEED is a great “do it all” tool for the dedicated sport-mixed climber.
The properties of the Russian made tool makes it a a superb tool in steep terrain on small edges and pockets. This is very imported for competition ice climbing and drytooling. The general shape makes it still a good tool on sportmixed terrain M7 and up. Specially outside where other triple long handled tools become weird and fragile and are no longer useful for use in real rock.
It’s importend to realise that you have to bring right picks for the terrain your aiming for.
We climbed routes up to M14+ in mixed terrain with the mixed pick but the WI7- becomes really hard to climb if you use the competition picks. The original picks are great for competitions and climbed there way up to EU and Worldcup podiums.
For competition climbing the original comp picks with side cheeks make all the difference. They work great on real rock holds steel holds and epoxy holds.
But: These picks are horrible to climb real ice with since the tip of the pick is angled almost “back” towards the tool. where the Steinle mixed and ice pick have a less agressieve angle and a “open” tip.
The rubberised handle is relatively thin. This makes it ideal to use a ticker grippy tennis tape to thicken the handle and increase comfort and grip. for the upper handle we use a “overgrip” for tennisrackets. this thinner tape gives good grip but doesn’t thicken the shaft.
The handle is good for small hands or used with thin gloves. When climbing ice routes i would always recommend a good thick glove with knuckle protection. My size Large doesn’t fit in the handle with a tick glove so I prefer other tools for pure Ice climbing.
Wrapping the tool fully in tape also makes it “biteable” and protects the carbon shaft. our tools fell downloads of time on to flat ground rocky surface etc. I’m sure the tennistape wrap gave the necessary additional protection when falling down 30 meters into steep rocky terrain or flat concrete before the tool bounced up from the ground 5+ meters..
So would I recommend the ASPEED? if you want to do loads of sportmixed, competition ice climbing or drytooling absolute YES!
Related