Wrapping Ice Tools with 3M Gripping Material: the Ideal Tool Wrap for Ice Climbing?

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I like experiments. I like “back yard science.” When I was a little kid - elementary school age - my dad helped me run a test for a science fair: looking at if aluminum bats produced more distance when hitting a baseball than wooden bats. Of course they did. To anyone who wasn’t an 8 year old (or so) that was well known. The point was walking me through the process of the scientific method. My dad, an engineer by profession, understood that.

We set up parameters and tried to isolate variables by doing things such as using a baseball tee rather than pitching to avoid the changes in rebound effect from the ball, itself, if thrown at different speeds. We measured conditions such as wind speed, temperature, humidity (which was always very low and consistent, living in New Mexico) so that we could at least account for, if we couldn’t control, the way conditions might impact the tests. We set up a process for recording data - in a time before personal computers, let alone mobile computers, tablets, or smart phones.

It’s one of those childhood core memories. My dad patiently helping me learn about experimentation and testing.

I recently did another “back yard science” experiment about canister stoves in summer conditions. You can check out that blog and video, here.

But the reality is that I enjoy the process of trying out things and seeing how the test case compares to the performance or conditions or whatever before the test.

I do that, admittedly less scientifically, with gear all the time. i will often change just one piece of gear over a few weeks or months, in many different circumstances, and then try to evaluate how that new piece of gear either made my life easier or harder when I was out in the backcountry. Usually, the answer is that some things got easier and other things got harder, because all gear has tradeoffs. But, I at least can then take a more objective view as to if the new tradeoffs presented by the new gear are somehow more agreeable to me than the tradeoffs that existed with the old equipment.

Given the flood of gear design and manufacturing in the outdoors market, I don’t know how else to do it. There is simply way too much competing materials (this manufacturer’s jacket versus that one’s, for instance) for me to try them all out in direct comparison. So, instead I compare my gear in a pre- and post- kind of way. Did this one piece of gear work “better” or “worse” for me and the way I use my equipment.

As I state in the video, if you are interested in trying out this little gear experiment with me, I would love the collaboration and feedback from those willing to try. Like any sample size, our likelihood of finding better information and more objective determinations of the pros and cons will only go up when we can create a “larger sample.” So, if you are interested, you can get the 3M Gripping Material adhesive and 3M Gripping Material gloves and join in.