OURAY — Every winter, when the temperatures drop, the Ouray Ice Park farmers start dribbling water down the sheer cliffs of the Uncompahgre River Gorge, building fangs of ice that lure thousands of climbers to the region.
Those climbers stir a vibrant winter economy for Ouray. The peak of the park’s season comes with the Ouray Ice Festival and Competition. The 29th annual event this year drew nearly 50 of the world’s top ice climbers who competed in an internationally sanctioned contest. They scaled specially designed routes that combine both ice and rock, earning points for international rankings with the UIAA governing body.
The park hosted a test UIAA-like event in 2021, proving to the international governing body that the Ouray Ice Park was capable of developing an in-person and livestreamed international contest for the world’s top ice climbers. The next year the Ouray Ice Park hosted its first UIAA-sanctioned North American Ice Climbing Championship, the only sanctioned event in North America. It was livestreamed in 24 countries, drawing 330,000 views.
There are 250 ice climbing routes in Ouray with 17,000 feet of vertical feet, making it the world’s largest human-made public ice-climbing specific park.
“There’s no other place where you can literally walk up from town and throw a rope down and try ice climbing or you hire a guide and come up and climb in the park,” said Peter O’Neil, the park’s executive director.
In mixed climbing, the climber uses tools to ascend a mix of rock and ice. Their boots are strapped with crampons and they use pairs of ice axes, each wrapped for better grip in both their gloved hands and teeth. (For when they swap hands on their tools.)
LEFT: Ice tools, used by professional climber Jay Jacobs, are specifically designed for mixed climbing. Their hooked tips on sharp blades help hold on thin rock ledges and ice. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun) RIGHT: Climber Ian Umstead catches his breath following his climb in the UIAA Ice Climbing Continental Open finals. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
Nearly 50 high level ice climbers ascended competition routes Saturday that finished with a push through a complex, overhanging puzzle that looked like it belonged in an indoor climbing gym.
“It’s such a unique sport,” O’Neil said. “It takes a lot of mental stamina and mental energy and it takes commitment and you gotta be tough. It’s a different kind of problem-solving, but it makes the high mountains, which have both rock and ice, more accessible.”
Colorado-based Tyler Kempney won this year’s UIAA Ice Climbing Continental Open event in Ouray with the fastest time to the top. Shirley Catalina, of Boulder, won the women’s division.
The climbers battle against “barfies,” an intensely painful lack of blood flow in their arms as they ascend quickly. They are problem-solving with limited holds, from natural rock, ice and man-made materials. They must be creative with their balance and movement while racing against the clock.
The climbers can take the lessons learned from competing on manmade mixed walls to the backcountry and explore remote wintery mountain ranges across the world, O’Neil said.
“If you’re going to be a good alpinist, you know, being in the high mountains,” he said, “you have to be a good rock climber, as well as a good ice climber.”