Yeah, I thought monos were a stupid idea from the get go for pure ice, although it's certainly possible that was a rationalization to keep using my Fangs.
Certainly the interesting part of the foot fang is the v shape blade between the dual point. Never know why they don't have that blade on other crampon. When you kick on ice cycle, the blade just cut the surface of the ice an allow a deeper placement of each point.
When you think at the shape of the ice, most route of grade 2 to 4 are mostly uniform in mountain and area with no diurnal melt down. Dual point are better on those place because you have a better stability. As you climb to 5 and 6 grade, the quality of the ice is not as good and you have to climb on ice cycle. A one inches ice cycle hit in the middle don't gave you any grip of your dual point in the ice because your boot hit the rond shape of the ice cycle beforeyour point. At this moment, level expert, leashless, etc, mono point is more than easier.
At my point of view, always better for a beginer to use dual point because the technique is a little bit harder to understand. When the beginer know how to evaluate the ice, he can move to mono point to perform. The facility way, using mono point because you need less power to anchor your point, is not, at my opinion, a good solution. A solid climber on dual point is always going to be a stronger climber to me than a shaky mono point climbing a level higher.
Think at the description of Bouchard climbing repentence last year...describe by Al if my memory is good.
