Next time your cellphone signals suddenly dies or drops off, and you're about to complain about it, take a second and think about whether there's been any freezing weather recently. If there has, whilst it's still an inconvenience, you should probably spare a thought for the unfortunate souls who are facing a task like this to fix the problem for you.
This isn't an Arctic climber attacking a wall of ice; this is a technician climbing up a frozen cell phone tower to try to shift some of the ice away and get everything working again. Cell phone towers tend to reach significant heights, where the air is colder, and so adverse weather affects them more than anything on the ground. With the wrong combination of high winds and snow, frozen water can become an icy spear, sailing through the air until it finds something to wrap itself around and cling on to.