Fans of ice climbing were not the only ones cheering at the Ouray Ice Festival last weekend. The state’s bosses of tourism and outdoor recreation were watching closely as thousands gathered in Ouray’s famed ice park, a rally supported by an unprecedented wave of grants designed to pull the community back from the pandemic. And […]
Ouray Ice Festival
Posted inColoradans, Energy, News, Outdoors
Tumbling rock destroys bridge to Ouray Ice Park, pipeline to the country’s oldest running hydroelectric power plant
Workers arriving early at the Ouray Ice Park on Tuesday found a disaster. A boulder the size of a pool table had sheared off the canyon wall and destroyed the metal walkway accessing the park’s popular ice climbs. And it ripped out the penstock that ferries water to the oldest operating hydropower plant in the […]
Posted inColoradans, Culture, Environment, News, Outdoors
At 25 years old, Ouray’s ice festival continues to foster — and anchor — the winter sport’s rise
OURAY — At the bottom of a cold crevasse in the Uncompahgre Gorge, where sunlight reaches but only a few minutes a day, the climb to the surface begins. The darkness is broken with the clicking echoes of steel penetrating ice. Slowly a small figure emerges on the icy wall, tethered by a rope. If […]