For Will Gadd and Raphael Slawinski, what came to mind when the ice turned into a overhanging dry roof of handholds allowed them to be the only two of 12 climbers to reach the top. What allowed Gadd to climb to the top of the men's difficulty award podium for the second straight year was a mere three swings of Slawinski's ice axes.

	Will Gadd on his winning ice-climbing ascent.

Gadd's 38 "strikes" into the ice in order to get up the wall -- compared to Slawinski's 41 -- was the difference between gold and silver. Gary Ryan took the bronze, falling just as he got past the dry climbing section of the course.

"Ah, man. It feels good," Gadd said. "I trained really hard for this, I put a lot of effort into it. The reward of winning is great, because these guys are strong and good and competed really hard. The field was really strong this year.

"You want to win by doing well and other people doing well. ... Last year I was a pretty fair ways ahead of the field. This year I only won by three strikes -- that's nothing. That's like swatting a fly.

"Whoa, that was close."

Slawinski set the standard as just the second climber up. Six climbers then lost their holds as they tried to find the proper path on the dry wall. Gadd reached the top as the ninth climber.

The course of action taken by Slawinski and Gadd as they reached the dry overhang proved there was more than one way to reach the top.

Slawinski used his axes on the handholds, pulling himself up with just three picks into the left side of the dry wall. Gadd, on the other hand, took off his gloves, dipped into a bag of chalk and traversed from the right side of the wall to the left with his bare hands.

"I thought I was going to go straight up, but when I got up there I thought, 'Be organized, be comfortable,'" Gadd said. "Last year I tried to climb it with gloves and it was really bad. So this year I thought I'd just climb it with my hands. I don't know, there are a lot of ways to do it, for me it was just super enjoyable to do it the way I did it."

Slawinski knew his trip up the wall was good, but there was room for Gadd to bump him out of the top spot.

"You could definitely minimize the number of sticks over the route," Slawinski said. "I was making just small advances with every stick. If someone had more power, they could really reduce the number of sticks up there.

"Up below the roof, I felt pretty good. When you are dry-tooling, you never know when a tool is going to blow. I was kind of expecting one of my tools to blow at any moment. I would have been pretty upset if I'd of blown it once I got back to the ice."

For Gadd, the gold was his third overall medal in three Winter X Games, and he took the bronze in 1997. He said competing in the Winter X Games is always exciting, especially with the crowd noise behind him.

"Usually it's just me and a goat when I'm climbing," Gadd joked.

The Winter X Games, meanwhile, was Slawinski's first competition and just the second for Ryan -- who has 20 years of rock-climbing experience, but actually got into the Winter X ice competition with the backing of Gadd.

"You know I came here thinking I was way out of my league," said Ryan, who finished last in his only other ice-climbing event. "I think were rooting for me to get me an invitation because I have a good background in climbing and I've done some really hard new routes on real ice and rock.

"People like Will said 'give this guy a shot.' I came here with very little expectations. But it was a bonus to me to have both ice and rock on this route."

Slawinski was invited to last year's Games, but was injured in a horrifying fall near his home in Calgary, Alberta. Slawinski, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, fell 90 feet to the ground after a major section of the free-hanging ice pillar he was climbing broke with him on it.

"I was very lucky to walk away from that fall. I was extremely lucky to be alive," he said. "I'm not a competition climber, so to finish second to someone like Will is great for me. This is great, it's really cool.

"It feels really exciting to be out here this year after getting hurt last year."

While Gadd and Slawinski drew wild cheers for reaching the top, fourth-place finisher Helgi Christensen drew the loudest cheers for not making it past the dry wall.

Christensen's sheer will not to fall off the ice overhang was tiring just to watch. He dangled by both arms, then his left arm, and finally in a figure-four leg move over his right arm for a four-minute period. His fight to hold on finally ended, but not before he gave a "thumbs up" sign to the crowd.