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Nope, but I've got a Petzl Adze someone can buy from me..... (for a quark).

Dow Williams wrote:Mark, if you want to progress to steep waterfall ice, and I believe you do, best to do away with the adze now (you more than likely will be able to switch it out on whatever tools you have or get your hands on, or of course keep both, they are easy to switch out....one adze for alpine, hammer for waterfall). The perceived risk to your face on a tool popping out is much more of an influence on your climbing prowess then the improved ice clearing ability. Your pics will be more than sufficient to chop away at chandelierly ice.

I bought my ice tools used from someone who had a 2-hammer set up for this exact reason. I suppose chopping ice quicker would be nice, but I don't want a double eyebrow!

-Mark

Here’s a run down off what I’d consider as being the perfect “full contact” adze.

You can hammer in a gear with it and it won’t snap off or bend. This includes stubborn anchors, pegs and smashing frozen chockstones and crap out of cracks so you can get some gear in.
It must be able to be inserted sideways and take your entire weight without any fear of bending or breaking. An adze that can do this is a cheating weapon par excellence, and will get you up a lot of routes that would otherwise need scary laybacking moves.
The adze must be able to chop you a snow hole or bivy ledge in double time, and again it must not snap off when you hit frozen rocks with it.
The adze must be shaped so that you can hook wide cracks with it, so a modern tapered design is good.
Lastly it needs anough depth that when you reverse your curved axe, it can be used to get a solid stick in crud, shit and snowy crap.

excerpted from: http://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/blog/vi ... _of_adzes/

Adzes are great for getting your car unstuck from an icy ditch on your way to go dry tooling

Rocker Paully wrote:Adzes are great for getting your car unstuck from an icy ditch on your way to go dry tooling

Yeah, and some adzes will even open a bottle of beer...

I saw someone draw blood from a forehead with her hammer tool, so no matter what you have if you drive a tool in your face it ain't gonna be pretty.

On a separate note, what is everyone's thought about the adze - in dominant hand or non-dominant hand? I usually have mine in my non-dominant hand...

This past summer, I was slugging my way up a Glacier in the Canadian Rockies. I had my 90 mm in both hands. Smack the adze end into the sun softened snow, and move a crampon hold. Repeat.

welle wrote:I saw someone draw blood from a forehead with her hammer tool, so no matter what you have if you drive a tool in your face it ain't gonna be pretty.

On a separate note, what is everyone's thought about the adze - in dominant hand or non-dominant hand? I usually have mine in my non-dominant hand...

Non-dominant to start (in case I want to hammer a spectre or a screw to start it with my good hand), but I switch as I go along now that I'm leashless. But yeah, always left hand to start.

Mark Straub wrote:They were originally invented for chopping steps, something made mostly outdated with the invention of crampons

Mark, various posts in the thread have summarized uses and dangers of adzes. I'll just comment on the history a bit. Cutting steps remained popular long after crampons were invented--even 12-point crampons. The first 12-point crampons were made by Laurent Grivel in 1929. They were used for the first ascent of the Eiger Nordwand. Yet, when in 1968 Flematti and Desmaison climbed the Linceul on the Grandes Jorasses, they still cut thousands of steps in the ice. When Messner wrote of his solo ascent of the North Face of the Droites in 1969, he felt the need to explain why he didn't cut steps. Incidentally, he carried an axe and a dagger, which was not unusual at the time. The late sixties and early seventies saw the development of "piolet traction" which required not only front points but two (short) tools. Only then the decline of the adze begun, some forty years after the invention of the 12-point crampons.

Dude! The Adze is for chopping out blocks of ice in the parking lot to put in the cooler to keep the after climb beers cold!!!

I have used it to shop out a belay seat in the snow/ice. It would have been very hard with just the pick.