I’m not terribly active on here, so I may have missed the birth of this trend in the past few years.
The leashless ice-tool scene, I get. I don’t practice it, but I’ve heard decent arguments for it. When you’re roped and you lose a tool, you generally get to live.
But
I went out East last weekend for the first time in about 5 years, I took some local sport climbers out to Mt Washington for their first dose of Alpine. I referred everyone to IME for their rentals as always… something I may not do again.
The rental BD Ravens all had some ridiculous 2-part leash. It consisted of a wrist strap and an O-ring that slid up and down the axe shaft. There was a rubber ring on the shaft that was intended to keep that O-ring from sliding off the end of the shaft. I believe it was made by Camp, but the name had faded.
For one in our party, the rubber ring *fell off the shaft* during normal use, making the leash nothing more than a useless ugly bracelet. There’s no way it would act as a leash if it needed to be one.
I brought this up at IME when they were returned, and the kid at the counter seemed to agree with me… at first. “Yeah those things suck…. I’d like us to take the leashes off the axes altogether”. He seemed befuddled when I noted their importance, and pointed out that I owed my life to a leash.
And truth be told, I saw a hell of a lot of leashless ice axes on the hill this weekend, in the hands of many people on guided trips. (I think 90% of people on that route are guided).
What happens when you fall? Icy gloves, slippery steel and aluminum, dropping the axe can happen easily. I can personally attest to the violence of a tumble on a steep slope, it caused me to drop my axe, and reeling it back in on the leash was the only way I was able to self arrest (it took me a couple hundred feet to get it done).
Switching from hand to hand can be a bit onerous, but totally worth it in the grand scheme of things. So what happened?