This is my little story about my two weeks of winter in Ouray, creating the competition routes for the Ouray Ice Festival.  It’s not very refined, but I thought I’d post it anyway. 

 

“It looks like you’ve got a blank slate to work with” Mark said after I asked him how the comp routes were looking.  I had just got into town from Mexico where I was spending the majority of the winter.  Several weeks working on these routes already and they look like a black slate, I thought to myself. 

I had only been in town for less than an hour and decided I better drive by the Ice Park to see how things were looking.  I wasn’t exactly sure how to interpret the blank slate comment and I wanted to see for myself before it got dark.  The blank part must have been all of the ice hanging over the routes. 

 

Cleaning the Slate

It took two afternoons of hanging from a rope with a chainsaw and an axe to cut down the large hanging daggers of ice.  Let me tell you that it doesn’t take much of an error to erase yourself in that situation.  There are a handful of things that could go wrong, all with irreversible consequences. Most of the time it was hard to know when the big masses of ice would give into gravity and go crashing into the gorge.  It was remarkable how little ice could suspend such a large mass.  Then, “crack” and my feet would be hanging in space where the ice once was. 

The highlight of this destructive and dangerous work was when Mike and I freed a great pillar of ice, about the mass of a full size van from the wall. I had left a small brittle attachment point at the bottom of the pillar, fearing that if I removed it, the whole thing might come down on me.  I had to think about this situation a bit and visualize how to go about cutting down an ice pillar.  I knew it would be something like a tree except that it was attached on top as well as on bottom, and trees tend to tip over, where ice just collapses. The hanging daggers had been easy in comparison because, once you cut the top, gravity does the rest.

After cutting through the top of the pillar, the monster refused to collapse under it’s own weight.  It took Mike and I pushing against the rock, moving it back and forth, to tip it into the gorge.  The resulting explosion was surreal and grand.  The small crowd that gathered to watch applauded.

  This photo is of me cleaning off the little stuff that regrew, not the big ones.

The Prelim Route

The removal of the pillar and hanging daggers had left a very interesting system of ice roofs hanging over the intended preliminary competition router.  The legacy of the ice festival competition had grown into routes that largely consisted of steep rock and relatively easy ice.  I thought it would be fun to reverse that and create a route that would have hard ice climbing for a change.  I had these great solid stumps of ice hanging over the lip of a large overhand, with a boundary line, I could keep the competitors on really steep ice.  My original rock route I had worked so hard for in November would have to wait another year. 

My first ice climb of the year was taking a run on my prelim route.  It was absolutely terrifying hanging on to the lip of an ice roof, way above the bottom of the gorge.  The moves were hard and the exposure was sickening.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do more, cry or throw up.  I willed myself through the experience, as I couldn’t find anyone else willing to try the route that wasn’t already competing.  Someone had to try the route.

Competition day came and I had offered to help the judges familiarize with the route.  The first two climbers were girls who had signed up at the last minute.  They fell after the first couple of bolts leading up to the ice.  Things were starting to look good.

Mathieu and Audrey were up next.  They were friends of mine from Quebec.  Both of them hiked the route like it was a warm up.  I was happy for them, but to have two people climb to the top so early in the competition made me nervous.  Was my route too easy?  Has the winter in Mexico made me softer than I thought?

Then, as it to reward me, climbers started falling off the route.  What a relief! 

Most of the competitors were my friends so I wanted them to do well, but it would be bad as a route setter if most of the competitors topped out on my route

I was a nervous confused mess.  I walked away to go work on the finals route.  I couldn’t handle the pressure of watching any more.

 

Creation of the Final Route

The finals route consisted of easy ice to a 60 ft section of overhanging rock to a 20 ft ice toof rising traverse.  The two hanging logs were to connect the ice ot an artificial wall attached to the bridge, dubbed “the diving board”.  It was a lot of different elements to connect together.  I knew it would either be great or turn into a total disaster. 

Try to visualize how it would come together kept me awake at night.  There were a number of safety concerns that plagued my rest as well.  Would climbers swing into the logs in the event of a fall?  Would the ledges on either side of the gorge be a concern?

It took several days to the hanging logs in place and to put the holds on the artificial wall.

The final day Marc Beverly was keen to help and took over the task of wrapping up the final details.  I felt a little guilty that he had to hang off the bridge, but I was so relieved at the same time.  After over a week of hanging off ropes, rigging, cutting ice, I was over it.

It felt great to leave and go teach a clinic.  There was about three hours where I didn’t have to think about the route.

The prelim route turned out to be a great success.  As it turned out, about half a dozen of the 40 competitors topped out, perfect for a prelim.  I proved that we could make an ice climb difficult enough to punish some of the worlds best ice climbers.  Climbers that never fall of ice go so pumped that they let go of their tools and dropped into the air.  I now wish I would have seen it all.

 

Finals Day

12 of the top men and five of the top women from the prelim went on to climb on my finals route.  I was appointed as on of the judges for the day which meant I had to watch the whole competition. The only real saving grace to my stress level was that there was no longer anything I could do to change things.  All I could do was sit and watch the show.  There was all sorts of nervous moments; watching the competitors make clips from holds I knew were bad, and watching them fall.  When one competitor, Will Mayo, came close to the end of the route after dropping one of his ice tools, I thought a handful of climbers might finish the route.  I was trying to guess how many could finish before the route would be considered too easy.

At the end, only one guy made it to the top in a dramatic dyno to the final hold and just before he ran out of time.  The two strongest climbers, Evegeny and Ines both fell just before the top.  Evegeny would have finished the route in only eight minutes, but slipped at the end.

 

In retrospect, a lot of different outcomes could have taken place, but luck was on my side.  Nobody could have finished and eight people could have finished.  Nobody got hurt, none of the holds broke, and it was a great show to watch.  What more could I have asked for?