NEW HEIGHTS: Tom Robertson scales an icy silo in Cedar Falls. Said another climber: “You’ve got to be creative when you live in vertically challenged areas.”Cedar Falls, Iowa — SURROUNDED by cornfields that stretch to the horizon, in a place where molehills pass for mesas, avid outdoorsman Don Briggs has long dreamed of climbing a mountain. So he decided to build one.
Briggs spends most winter nights hosing down a quartet of grain silos on a friend's farm — and relies on the Corn Belt's frigid temperatures to transform the water into frozen walls of ice that tower nearly 70 feet straight up. By the time he's done, the ice encasing the outside of the silos is 4 feet thick in spots — and ready for the onslaught of ice climbers drawn to this strange marriage of farming and extreme sports.
"The word 'lunatic' was bandied about quite a bit. Even my wife thought I was insane when I first told her I wanted to do this," said Briggs, 57, a physical education instructor at the University of Northern Iowa. "To me, it made perfect sense. The highest point in Iowa is going to be on top of a silo."
Photos by Matthew Putney
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