After working with the New York State Parks Department
and the New York State Parks Police, Will and his team set out to
create a plan for a safe climb that wouldn’t damage the falls
themselves.Importance of Focus
Lots of things make the climb treacherous. “Niagara Falls is mas-
sive. You’ve got semi-trucks of water coming over the edge
every second. There are trucks and trains and office buildings
pouring off of that thing. And if you’re in the way, you’re going to
get killed.” The first part of the journey is to travel over what Will
affectionately called “The Cauldron of Doom” (it’s where the falls
gush into a massive hole in the ice). From there Will picked and
climbed up the frozen falls stopping every few feet to add ice screws
and other pieces of climbing equipment. And that’s not all. The air
is filled with mist, which freezes to you. It’s just an astoundingly
complicated place to be. And then there’s the ice.
“It’s not easy ice, either,” Will added. The ice in Niagara
Falls forms in layers. There’s a layer of ice, then fluffy air-filled
snow, then more ice. Not at all like the smooth ice of a hockey
rink. Normal ice flows down like ice on your sidewalk. But
Niagara’s spray forms ice in layers that are inherently unstable.
The night before the big climb Will dropped in from above to
clear the route of the most dangerous hanging ice that could
break off (with him) during the climb. “I was taking off pieces
the size of small cars.”
One of his main climbing tasks is to try to understand where
the good ice is and where the bad ice is. Try to imagine hanging off
the side of an ice-covered waterfall with ice climbing picks. Some
of the ice is solid and thick and will hold your weight as you pull
yourself up. Other ice will slide off once your pick goes in. That’s the
ice you want to avoid. One false move could be deadly. Will has to
focus, listen, and choose wisely and decisively, and his high sensa-
tion-seeking personality is ideal for this task. Lower amounts of
cortisol and increased flow allows Will to pick the perfect ice. And
there’s a lot to figure out.
“There’s two things you use to figure out how good ice is.
First it’s the sound when you hit it. What’s it sound like? What’s
going on? Does it sound like you just punched a thin shell over
something soft behind it? If you hear, ‘Crk’, that’s no good. Or does
it sound hard, and clean, and ‘thunk thunk’? And that’s a really77 / Sports and Adventure in High Sensation-SeekingDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:19:03, subject to the Cambridge