Here is a fellow SheJumper, Candace Horgan's personal account of climbing The Great White Icicle—a particularly famous ice route—in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah. Especially, noteworthy is Candace's battle with painful, arthritis, which flaired up during her ascent on the Icicle. Way to pull through, Candace. Thanks for your story! —Leah Fielding, Associate Editor

It's getting late, and colder. All I can think of as I swing my tools is that my right shoulder is really starting to feel like lead. Each swing becomes more difficult, and the crux is still looming, a delicate hanging column on the right side and a slightly easier line on the left side. Yet the party that is climbing adjacent to us is heading toward the easier exit. I'll have to lead the crux with an arm that is getting harder and harder to lift. Not good.

The Great White Icicle is an eye-catching line of ice on the south side of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Impossible to miss, the 600-foot direct line is less steep than it looks from the road. In fact, it's rumored that Andrew "AT Apostle" McLean has skied the route, or at least parts of it. Of course, like all ice climbs, the difficulty of the Icicle is conditions-dependent. In thin conditions, it can approach WI4, but at its thickest, it's mostly WI3+ to WI2+, with the hardest pitches the first and the last (like any great climb). You can also vary the difficulty, depending on the line you choose. Some pitches, such as pitch 3, are broad curtains of ice that can support up to three parties at a time.

Therein lies one of the Icicle's detriments: it gets a LOT of traffic. It's not uncommon to queue up for it on the weekends. Climbing during the week gets you a better, but by no means certain, chance of solitude.

In February 2002, the American Alpine Club, of which I am a lifetime member, held its annual meeting at Snowbird. At the time, I was also working as the editor of the AAC's quarterly Alpine News, so it was a working trip. Mostly though, I couldn't wait to get a sampling of Utah ice. My then-husband Elliott and I made the long drive to Salt Lake, arriving in the late afternoon/early evening. Before arriving in Salt Lake, we scoped out the true goal of the trip: Stairway to Heaven, a massive, steep line of WI5 ice in Provo Canyon. I'd done some long, steep routes in Colorado, including Bridalveil Falls, and Stairway looked even more impressive, with the convenient ledges at the end of almost every full pitch seeming to provide a welcome respite.

The Icicle was supposed to be the warm-up climb. We checked into the Cliff Lodge and got a Gunks-ish alpine start the next day, leaving for the ice around 9:30. A short, 10-minute hike brought us to the base and we roped up. The first pitch consisted of a short step of 70-80 degree thin-ish ice, with easier ice above leading to a fixed belay on the right side. Elliott handed me the rack.

One of the nice things about my ex-husband was his lack of ego when it came to me leading. He liked to tell a story about when we were at the base of a few climbs in East Vail and a couple of guys walked up to him and asked what we were planning to do. "Ask her," he said, to their surprise.

The first pitch went well. I led up about 30 feet on 70-degree ice to a choke point and placed a screw, clipped one of the ropes and kept going. Once I pulled over the steep bit, I cruised up the snow/ice low angle gully to the bolt belay, then brought up Elliott. As he reached the belay, I handed him a couple of screws and told him to keep going. Another party had come up behind us, and we wanted to stay ahead of them.

The second pitch was about 30 feet of snow to an apron of low-angle WI2 ice. Elliott led it with two screw placements and clipped into a fixed belay stance on the left side that you could park an SUV in, then brought me up. For speed, I used pilot panne technique, alternating every few steps with a solid swing of the tool. In pilot panne, you hold the ice tool at its head in your palm and push the picks into the ice. It's a good technique on lower-angle and softer ice.

From the belay, I re-racked the screws and gazed at the third pitch. A lower-angle series of steps was on the left, while a steeper section of off-vertical ice was on the right. By this time, my shoulder had started to hurt, and I split the difference, heading up the middle with the crux looming above. Somewhere around the halfway point of the pitch, a leaden sensation made my right shoulder feel heavy. I had hurt that shoulder in college playing intramural hockey, and periodically it would flare up.

By this time, we had caught a party above, and they were setting up a belay on the left side for the easiest line up the crux pitch, leaving me only the right side to head to for a belay. That was the line I had originally wanted anyway, a steep curtain with a hole behind it for a belay station, but with my shoulder hurting, I wasn't looking forward to it.

I brought Elliott up the last belay station, grabbed two screws, took a deep breath, and headed up the curtain, placing a screw at the top of my reach to offer some pro on the first, awkward moves out of the hole onto the curtain. I tried to stem as much as possible to take some weight off my arms, and with about 15 feet of climbing, reached a stance from which I could reach over a bulge and place another screw in lower-angle ice to protect the final crux moves.

Each swing with the right arm was torture, and I started to worry about the security of my sticks with that arm. I tried to make as many moves with my left arm as possible, often climbing high enough that my waist was level with the right tool and pushing down on the tool head in a mini-mantle move.

Finally, I pulled onto the last move and broke through the trees to the last belay stance. I brought Elliott up, and we headed over to the descent gully. It had enough ice in it that glissading wasn't an option, so we left the crampons on and pulled out the headlamps as a precaution, descending in fading light to the car.

Later in the hotel room, the leaden sensation was so bad that I couldn't even reach behind my back to unhook my bra. I tried skiing Snowbird the next day, but the pole plants were painful and difficult. Ice climbing was out of the question.

When we got home, I made an appointment with an orthopedic specialist. I'll never forget his diagnosis. "Usually, we don't see arthritis this bad until people are in their 50s." The college injury had made me more vulnerable to arthritic breakdowns. The doctor gave me a cortisone shot to help. When he offered to let me watch the X-ray screen as he guided the needle deep into my shoulder joint, I practically screamed "No!" While there was no pain from the shot, there was an uncomfortable pressure, and I made sure to keep my head turned in the opposite direction of the X-ray screen so I couldn't peek.

Alternative therapies, including a daily regimen of vegetarian glucosamine and stretching, have prevented the arthritis from flaring up that badly again, and after the shock to my mental outlook and a few months off, I started ice climbing again sporadically. Stairway to Heaven still awaits my ice tools. Anybody game?

Check out more of Candace and her outdoor adventures at www.candacehorgan.com