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Crunching, blinding white, biting cold. My muscles were painfully sore by now so I swung my arm back a bit, piolet in hand, to try and gain some momentum as I swung my arm forward to strike the ice. The tip bounced off the surface, breaking off a big chunk of it as it skidded to a side. I pushed myself back from the wall as I slightly sat back and yelled “ICE!” to my safety handler below me. He proceeded to warn everyone to take cover. A small block of ice falling from that height could severely hurt someone if we weren’t careful. I let out a deep breath and held the piolet firmly in my hand, ready to try again as I looked up at the few meters I had left to finish climbing the waterfall. This was not how I’d ever have expected to be spending a Sunday afternoon, that’s for certain. It had all started with me leisurely scrolling through Instagram that week. You know, looking without really seeing, until a certain ad caught my eye. It was an announcement for an “Initiation to Ice Climbing Workshop” held by a local alpinism club “Club de Andinismo El Bolsón”. In it they invited anyone of age who wanted to try ice climbing for the first time to sign up for a mere $1.200,00 ARS, it included the instruction and pretty much all the equipment. It was a golden opportunity if I ever saw one. I didn’t give myself time to even think about it, I immediately signed up. That’s how I ended up spending my Saturday afternoon taking a crash course on climbing equipment, history, and techniques from who turned out to be one of my elementary school teachers, Pablo, a certified mountain guide. (It’s a small town). I left the meeting overwhelmed with information and with my arms filled by the crampons, harness, shoes and helmet I’d been lent by the club. The rest was pretty much a blur right up to the moment when I first drove the piolet into the ice. That was the moment it got real and I realized that I was about to climb an 18 meter tall frozen waterfall with nothing but the strength of my body and the equipment to hold my weight. The equipment was more than capable of holding my mere 65 kg, I knew that. But looking at the centimeter and a half the piolet sunk into the ice and the forked tongue of the crampons where you were supposed to rest your weight wasn’t exactly reassuring. To me this had turned into a trust exercise. But I trusted the team and they trusted both me and the equipment. ‘I can do this’, I thought to myself as I took a deep breath and plunged the second foot hard against the ice. I tentatively tried my weight and it held, I felt a wave of relief flood me. I pushed my body onto the wall to look up while I loosened one of the piolets, looking for the next spot to stick it in. I kept going for a bit, slightly sitting back in the air every couple of steps to rest my legs and arms a little. White wind was swirling and howling around me, my calves and arms were burning from the effort. My hands were pretty much completely numb from the tension of holding the piolets. I looked up, knowing I wouldn’t be able to reach the summit. For a second it troubled me, being the perfectionist I am, but I stopped myself. I let the fact that I was hanging off a frozen waterfall 15 meters in the air sink in. I had done something beyond my wildest dreams that day with no previous training or preparation. I had found kindred spirits, I had pushed my boundaries, I had taken a leap out of my comfort zone and I had taken myself to the limit of my ability. Those 3 meters were nothing compared to everything else I had gained from the experience. It was by far one of the most terrifying, exhilarating, humbling and best experiences of my life.