As I stared in awe at the near-vertical icy reaches of Dragontail’s Triple Couloirs route over Memorial Day weekend, I was reminded again of the many delicious thrills of climbing. For three climbers in particular—Ron Eng, Mike Maude, and Mike Burns--ice climbing represents the ultimate challenge. The three climb leaders and members of the Mountaineers’ Seattle Climbing Committee recently rewrote the alpine and waterfall ice chapters of the Mountaineers Books’ top seller, Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills.

Among them, they have roughly 35 years of ice climbing experience to share with the greater climbing community. Each has successfully climbed Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska, and all three have ventured outside the United States, to such places including Mexico, Canada, Nepal, Pakistan, Europe, and even South America. Maude and Eng are both active with Seattle Mountain Rescue, and Burns has helped alpinists select appropriate climbing gear for the last four years at Feathered Friends in downtown Seattle. All three enjoy teaching novice and intermediate climbers through field trips, seminars and classes, and all have taught me much of what I know about ice climbing.

Eng, section leader for the Snow and Ice portion of the book, states: “when you’re ice climbing, you make your own way…you feel that you can impose yourself on the ice…you feel like you’re more in control.” Maude, active with Search and Rescue since the tender age of 15, has been instrumental in developing the Mountaineers’ Seattle waterfall ice climbing program, and has been choppered to the top of Rainier to help with three separate climbing rescues. Burns enjoys ice climbing “because so many people are NOT as attracted to it as to rock or crag climbing.” He laughs as he explains that when he first got interested in ice climbing, people thought he was a little crazy. Perhaps that’s a prerequisite.

In July of 2000, while still chair of the Seattle climbing committee, Eng sent an inquiry to Mountaineers Books about the possibility of a new Freedom revision. In October, Steve Cox accepted the position of chairman for the book, and asked Eng if he would be interested in heading the Snow and Ice section. Eng then teamed up with Maude and Burns to substantially revise and expand the Ice section to include two separate chapters, one on Alpine Ice climbing and the other on Waterfall Ice and Mixed Climbing. Their task was to illustrate the often subtle, but always very important, differences between alpine and water ice climbing. The other contributors to chapters in the section include Bruce Greenstein, Peter Clitherow, Grace Parker, Satu Muldrow and Paul Russell.

Now in its seventh edition, Freedom is considered to be “the single most comprehensive guide to mountaineering” and is even referred to by some as the “Bible of Mountaineering.” Burns points out that the book continues to evolve as the art and science of climbing does, with active climbers bringing the latest in techniques, training, and gear to all alpinists worldwide. According to Maude, the ice chapter from previous editions of Freedom was not sufficiently current for the Waterfall Ice Climbing course. Instructors wanted to have access to a single, solid resource for students. Freedom 7, with its substantial revisions, will become that resource.

Not only do the book’s writers share the newest and most current climbing nformation, but they also maintain a sense of the history behind mountaineering as well. As one example, Burns cites historic debate over the perfect length for an ice axe. Why is 70 cm preferred? Yvon Chouinard first proposed 70 cm some fifty years ago as the ideal axe length in order to assist as a balancing cane, long enough to perform a self-arrest, yet a comfortable length for long-distance travel. That length recommendation withstands the test of time.

A primary challenge of working on such an expansive project with so many bright minds is trying to select THE BEST or most current information when eight options might exist for any given scenario. Burns admits that he most enjoyed being able to work closely on the project with people he’s been climbing with for years. Eng was pleased with the dedication and commitment each contributor made toward the project. Maude adds that it was a great experience working with people at vastly different climbing levels and styles. “We divided the work based on everyone’s unique strengths, and our specialties really complemented each other’s.”

What impressed me the most about each of these three talented climbers was their rich and vastly different, yet complementary, climbing histories. Eng first got interested in climbing when he saw the cover photograph of the book, On Ice and Snow and Rock, by Gaston Rebuffat, showing the French alpinist aid climbing an overhung roof. Eng started climbing with the Appalachian Mountain Club in Boston in 1984, and before moving out to Seattle in 1991, he joined The Mountaineers, having learned about the club through Freedom 3. His first climb as a leader with the club was an ice climb, the NW Buttress of Chair Peak, in 1996.

Burns grew up with climbing gear strewn all over the house (his father Bob Burns is an avid climber as well). When Bob--per the climbing code--needed a third party member for many of the Tacoma Peak Pin climbs, Mike found himself acting as that third, certainly a suitable climbing partner. He recalls his reaction to his first experience climbing Mt. Rainier at the age of 17: “Good, now I never have to do that again!” But he has always managed to return to climbing, an activity he finds to be “grounding, relaxing. I tend to think a lot, and when I’m climbing I really DON’T think as much, I just let the physical side take over and let the brain relax.”

Maude also got an early start, enjoying backpacking trips with his family since the age of 12. His very first climb was Mt. Hood in 1980, and his first exposure to waterfall ice was a one-day seminar in 1989. He credits the start of the current Waterfall Ice Climbing course to Scott Stimson, who first set up an extended seminar in 1994. Mike took over the honors in 1999 and turned the seminar into the highly regarded Water Ice course as it is currently configured. He already looks forward to participating on the Freedom 8 revision committee, when the brand new sport of leashless mixed climbing will be included.

I couldn’t resist asking such experienced climbers what their personal favorites were, thinking perhaps Denali would be high on the list, and the answers were delightful surprises. Maude favors the Entiat Icefall on his namesake, Mt. Maude, and returns to it at least every other year for the steep ice, solid technical rock at the top, and very few people. Burns has a fondness in his heart for ice climbing in Banff with his many friends there, but recounts his experience on Gasherbraum II (“the big nasty” in the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan) as his most difficult, in terms of the extremely remote character of the climb. And Eng, explaining that there are memorable aspects to each and every climb, quips that his favorite climb “has to be the most recent one I did.” His last point will resonate with me forever, as my own recent Dragontail/Colchuck combo climb certainly stands out for me.