Built on other people’s knowledge, so it pays them back
Ice Cycles is built on other people’s knowledge: guidebook authors, festival organisers, public weather data, and climbers who post what they saw. The way it’s run is meant to give that back.
Everything here is free, for everyone
No premium tier, no locked archive, no extra features for people who tip. Everyone sees the same page. A tip pays for hosting and buys nothing else, and the tip page says so.
Your photos stay yours
When you post a photo or a report, you give this site permission to show it and to use it in the model. That’s all. You keep ownership, and you can post the same photo anywhere else. Photos we reject are deleted, not archived.
Your report stays in your words, under your name
We don’t reword reports, attach a rating to them, or combine them into a site verdict. Each one shows who posted it, the date they saw the ice, and where they saw it from. We can remove a report that breaks the rules. We can’t edit it.
Guidebooks come first
Guidebook authors spent years walking to these climbs and writing down where they are. Where a guidebook holds the route positions, we don’t publish them. We link to the book instead: a plain link, and we take no cut. Nothing on this site is behind a paywall. Some things aren’t on it at all, because they belong to someone else.
The people who actually know the venue
Venue pages link to the local ice festival and the local shop where there is one. They have seen more seasons there than any model has.
We don’t tell you to go
No ratings, no scores, no ranked list of this week’s best ice. The model reports quantities, with units and a stated confidence. Climbers report what they saw. Whether to walk under the ice is your call, because you’re the one standing there.
Physics, not degree-days
Most ice tools count freezing degree-days, a method borrowed from lake ice. Waterfall ice grows differently: wind and clear night skies matter as much as the temperature. Read how the model works. The model has not yet been checked against enough real formation dates. That’s what your reports are for.
Your information is never for sale
We will never sell, rent or trade information about you. Today that is a short list: one cookie to keep you signed in, page views counted without cookies, and no third-party trackers. The privacy policy has the detail.
Saw ice this week?
A dated report from someone who was there is the most useful thing anyone can add to this site.