What is dry tooling and why do you need to learn it?

Dry tooling is climbing rock with crampons and axes. Sometimes rock is too cold or slippery to climb with rock shoes and hands, or it is interspersed with ice, making dry tooling the easiest and most efficient way to climb it. If you want to climb big mountaineering or ice routes, these skills often come in handy. Experience dry tooling can give you the confidence to get through sections efficiently that may be in difficult condition, sometimes even when ski mountaineering. The photo below shows such an occassion on a section that was warm and dry the week prior.