In Profile: The Ice Wall Engineers

Just exactly what does it take to build an ice wall? Well Ice obviously but although essential its not the only thing and as we found out when we chatted to the two guys behind the three biggest developments in UK ice climbing in recent years it takes a lot of patience and determination, inspiration, perhaps, for their company name; Brute Force & Ignorance.

Mark Jacobs & Sam Clayton are the creators of the latest Ice Wall at The North Face Store, 130 Deansgate Manchester. ‘Some people think that the ice walls just appear! They don’t understand the effort and fine detail that goes into building one’. True enough ice walls have been appearing all across England over the last few years, the first, in Covent Garden was launched in 2003 promptly followed by their biggest and most challenging creation to date the Leeds Ice Wall which stands an impressive 16 metres and has over 30 routes on 7 faces.

Sculptors by trade Mark & Sam will be the first to tell you that they didn’t really discover a talent for building ice walls until half way through the first wall in Covent Garden. The idea came from a wall located in the Globe shopping centre in The Hague and after a visit to experience this first hand Mark set about building in a fridge in Hyde, Greater Manchester. He proceeded to refine and develop certain ice making techniques and methods of freezing to see which worked best.

After months of developing the processes they set to work on building the frame for the Ice Wall in Covent Garden. It wasn’t all straight forward even from this stage once the frame was constructed they had to overcome issues of temperature maintenance, the logistics of sourcing the snow and Health & Safety issues. It was then a further couple of months before the Covent Garden wall was ready for testing and ready for open use.

Many issues contribute to making the Ice Walls as good as they are, the design and the quality of the snow are both key to the overall Ice Wall experience, any contamination and the wall can almost change colour overnight. The snow for the Leeds Ice wall and this latest wall at the North Face Store came from Leeds, Xscape (www.xscape.com) and it can vary in quality depending on the chemicals used on any given day.

So these guys not only have to be Ice Climbers, sculptors, artists, engineers and well versed in Health & Safety but Chemists, its certainly no job for underachievers, Sam quotes the weirdest thing as being when they working on the Leeds Ice Wall the team had 3 MAs, 4 BA’s and 2 PHD’s between them making them possibly the smartest Ice Wall engineers ever!

After 3 months, 40 tons of snow and probably a few sleepless nights constructing the 8 metre Ice Wall at 130 Deansgate what’s next for the guys from Brute Force & Ignorance? Future ‘projects’ include Exhibition fittings through January and February 06, Mark’s Wedding lots of art exhibitions and month long residency at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (www.ysp.co.uk)

Thanks to Sam & Mark. If you want more information Sam & Mark can be contacted by e-mail, m.t.jacobs@btopenworld.com or i_liketrees@hotmail.com