A group of 12 climbers from the Tacoma Mountaineers headed to Ouray in January 2007 to get in some ice climbing and watch the annual Ouray Ice Festival. The Uncompaghre Gorge is a pretty spectacular place to be when the ice is in. And it’s pretty much always in during the winter months, thanks to a permanent irrigation system that makes ice whenever the sprinklers are turned on. Here’s Rex about half way up the classic WI4 line, Pick of the Vic:
The week was crazy cold. There was a blizzard in Pugetopolis while we were gone, and it was even colder in Colorado (subzero without the windchill). The ice turned very brittle, and we started looking for anything in the sun. Here’s Marty in full regalia down in the School Room:
When the festival rolled around, several of us signed up for clinics from the professionals. What an amazing sport when you can get face time with the world’s best athletes and they’re actually interested in teaching newbies the ropes. Maybe the sponsors give them incentives, but I’ve never come across a punk in the lot. I hope they keep doing it—it gets people psyched about ice and mixed climbing.
Eva, Mugs, and I signed up for a women’s mixed climbing clinic, taught by Carolyn Parker and Zoe Hart. It was a bit melancholy, because just the year before, several of us had taken a women’s ice clinic from Sue Nott and Karen McNeill, who died in Alaska a few months later. Carolyn and Zoe kept up Karen’s tradition of sparkles and never apologizing for slips.
We had a blast on Jesus Built My Finger Crack (M7) in the Mixed Alcove. The climbs always look intimidating from the base! The ice part is no sweat, but then the fun begins. Getting that first good torque in the crack is reassuring, then the focus turns to your feet. The trick is to move reasonably quickly and avoid over-pumping, not so easy to do with my ancient clodhopper boots. I was glad to have my monopoint crampons but missed the lightweight comp boots I had demo’ed the day before.
Mugs cranked it. She pulled a fun, opposing pressure move with her tool torqued in the crack, practicing her lieback for Super Dave, no doubt. No, she’s not wearing heel spurs.
This was Eva’s first trip here, too, and maybe her third time mixed climbing. Not bad!
I signed up for a hard mixed clinic with Guy Lacelle. Ever since I saw him do the splits into a heel hook over his head in the 2006 Competition, I had wanted to take a clinic from him. And what a bonus, Audrey Gariepy (second overall in 2007 and first in the women’s) came along for the clinic. To their credit, they were both great instructors and just nice people. Here they are (Audrey second from left and Guy third from right) with the other clinic participants. We had fun on TicTac and SuperDave.
TicTac is usually pretty packed, but we found an opening a few days after the competition. Lots of our peeps had fun on that one. The ice curtain that makes a good Figure 4 primer was hacked out. Here’s Jim:
We got some leads in, but the brittle ice wasn’t happy ice for pro. Bob and I swung leads on what looked like a fun climb from the bottom, but turned into a nasty hard shell crust about 4 inches thick that slid off of the snow layer below it. That one took longer than anticipated.
The brittle ice drove us into the mixed route in the School Room by the pillar, which was being climbed by some people who did not understand that you do not whack the heck out of a free-standing pillar, particularly on cold brittle days, and particularly when it makes that really nauseous THUNK noise. I’m sure they got some RAD photos to show the guys back home! If they lived that long….
Now, my buddy Mark and I are a wee bit competitive. Well, I’m not, but he is. He didn’t want me having all the fun on the mixed stuff. He and Marty set up a nice redirected belay in a cave protected from the next-door-whackers and other shrapnel, which made for a cozy environment for lots of smack talk. A cozy –10F or so.
He did make it out of the cave and onto the ice curtain, but not before doing his best impression of a piñata:
OK, here’s his glory shot:
Marty was up next, not to be outdone:
Just as we were calling an end to our day, it got a bit more complicated. There were some other folks in the School Room that day besides our party. We heard a yell and a splash, and we looked over to see a belayer in the creek—not a good thing on a cold day. Jayson was right next to him when a one-foot long chunk of ice dislodged from the climber and hit the belayer square on the helmet. Jayson, Marty, and Mark quickly dragged the belayer out of the water, Mark stepped on the rope, then I grabbed the rope headed up to the now-soloing climber.
It was a minute of chaos before people drifted into roles, but the bonus of climbing with people you know well is that you trust each other. While Jayson, Marty, and Mark stabilized the belayer on a foam pad, I lowered the climber to the base. Everyone stayed remarkably calm, thankful that the belayer was talking and together. The climber didn’t panic either. Fortunately, another party had a doctor as a member, so she came over and took over primary patient care.
Since we were just about to leave, Jim had walked around to the top rope anchors to start tearing stuff down. He didn’t know what had happened, but after a few yells back and forth, a passerby had called Ouray Mountain Rescue (I guess he had Mark Miller on speed dial) and Jim stood by making sure no one set up over the top of the group.
Between the belayer and climber, we had some warm clothes, and the water hadn’t saturated the belayer. Still, the belayer began to shiver, but given his head, neck, and possible back injury, we didn’t want to jostle him to get him in dry clothes but instead relied on about a dozen chemical heat packs around his neck, face, and chest. He was amazingly coherent.
Ouray Mountain Rescue was on the scene with a litter in maybe 10 to 15 minutes. They got the belayer into an inflatable body splint and about eight people carried the belayer to a hoisting system set up on the new School Room access ladder. Meanwhile, I walked around with the climber to gather gear and carry out to the road. He was really shaken up, but held it together amazingly well.
Fortunately, the belayer was fine—nothing broken. He just had a sore neck for a few days. The climber was OK as well, but no doubt had some post-traumatic stress. What was interesting is that some of our group also had some post-traumatic stress symptoms. The situation would have been far more dire had the Ouray Mountain Rescue group not arrived lickety split. I think the belayer must have some pretty cosmic karma to have survived what we think was about a 150-pound block of ice landing on his head. Note to the world: wear helmets! They’re cool!
We took a parting shot of the response team before heading back to the condo, where we debriefed after the incident. We had all noticed little snippets of things that concerned us as we observed the climber and belayer, and when we put it all together, we think several things contributed to the accident.
First, it was a really, really cold day, and the ice was incredibly brittle. Yet several of us saw the climber really whacking away at the ice. There wasn’t any need to, since after the crowds of the ice festival, all the routes in the School Room were really picked out and made for perfect hooking with few if any swings required. That was a matter of adjusting your technique to the conditions present, something the climber didn’t do.
Second, we had lengthened the anchors just enough to be able to belay that route from an island in the river. One of our party members said something to the belayer about not belaying directly under the climber, but the belayer responded that he thought they were fine.
Third, there had been climber-inflicted icefall all through the clinics in the School Room, but they came after the festival. Another party member had told them to watch out for an open area where the ice that hit the belayer came from.
Each warning flag was a solid yellow light, and together they represented a big blinking red light, but no one person saw each warning flag until we compared stories afterward. The whole situation represented a huge learning opportunity, and it would be folly to chalk it up simply to lack of skills on their part.
The condos were pretty plush, first above Bill’s climbing shop with Cindy and then at the Alpenglow units. We fed well, and usually cleaned the pans. The couches were cozy, too. Maybe a little too cozy?
Ouray ice climbing is just fun, the festival and professional climbers are an added bonus, but it’s my climbing partners that make me as happy as Chuck’s helmet in a snowstorm:
We had great views of Rainier, Adams, and Hood. If you haven't seen the building lava dome, get up there and look! But not too close to the corniced edge. Snow conditions were pretty good-- no postholing but no crampons necessary. We made it up in maybe 4 hours from the parking lot. Steps were very well established by the horde. 
