Damn is it hot. Like, really hot. Arizona is always miserable, but it's barely dipped below 110 in Phoenix lately. Much of the rest of the country is broiling in the 90s, and although Boston still has snow, it too is sweating in the sun. For those of you suffering through heat, perhaps photographer Ian MacLellan can offer a little relief.
He's got a portfolio of gorgeous photos of ice climbers scrambling up vertical sheets of frozen water throughout New England, axes in their hands and crampons on their feet. He shot them in the dead of winter in 2013 and 2014 when temperatures dropped well below zero. MacLellan,a photographer and filmmaker, isn't an ice climber (he prefers rock climbing), but grew fascinated by the sport because several friends are obsessed with it. He wanted to know drove them to spend their days exhausting themselves crawling over ice. "It all seems really cold and slow and I wanted to photograph it because it's such a unique spectacle," he says.
The photos were taken in Massachusetts (his home state), Vermont, and New Hampshire at beautiful locations like Mount Washington, Lake Willoughby and Flume Gorge. Instead of climbing alongside his subjects, MacLellan would rappel from the top and meet them as they worked their way up. It wasn't difficult, but MacLellan had to avoid sending chunks of ice cascading over the climbers. “With ice it’s really tricky,” he says. “You don’t want to whack anything because it’s malleable and treacherous.”
In a commercial shoot like you would see in, say, an REI catalog, the photographer might direct the climbers and have them repeat certain moves to get just the right shot. MacLellan wanted something more documentary, so he just let the climbers do their thing. If he missed the shot, it was gone. He didn't use crampons or ice-axes, opting instead to specialized gear called ascenders that allowed him to climb the rope. He carried a pair of Nikon D600s because they’re small, and an assortment of lenses including a 20m, 35mm and 70-200mm. It was far too cold for anything but thick gloves, which required a little practice before he could use the cameras. “I wore the nicest, warmest gloves I had because the hands are the first thing that gets cold,” he says.
In addition to climbing , MacLellan shot portraits and behind the scenes images. You can sense of the brutal cold in the photo of a climber waking up in a frost-covered sleeping bag. And you get a sense of the climbers' personalities and friendship in candids made before and after climbs. “I wanted to capture every part of the experience,”MacLellan says. “I wanted to show how much they love climbing and how much they’re willing to suffer.”
MacLellan hopes to resume the project next winter. He's going to stick to the East Coast because the geography is part of the story too. Even though the mountains are smaller than those out west, the locals love them and and grown highly skilled. "Everyone is like, 'The Rockies are so big and amazing,'" he says. "But to be honest, there are so many badass mountaineers that come out of the Northeast."
