Ice Climbing Festival

Last weekend, Brandon and I expanded our adventure repertoire with a trip to the 17th annual ice climbing festival in Ouray, CO - the ice climbing capital of the US and my new favorite place.  This place is friggin magical people. The town is at the bottom of a small valley, surrounded on 3 1/2 sides by towering mountains, and feels like an old western movie married a ski bum, moved to an abandoned mining village, and gave birth to a drunk hippie child. At least that's the best description I can come up with.

Ouray circa 1910

Ouray circa last week

We drove in on a warm and sunny afternoon after a 6 hour drive from Denver and the first two things we saw were 1) our motel's welcome sign:  "ICE ICE BABY" and 2) the local brewery's roof top deck.  Instant love.  

When we weren't at the ice park, we were usually at said brewery making friends with fellow climbers and drinking hot toddies. But before you go and judge us as a bunch of alchies, you should know that this pub had swings instead of bar stools, t-shirts of Jesus wearing ice climbing gear, and an "Opens at" sign that stated 11:07 am. 

Enough about the town... the climbing, oh, the climbing!  Even though our actual vertical time was short-lived (since it was our first go at it on ice), it was still amazing to be there in the midst of all those climbers wearing Patagonia down jackets, Petzl ice axes and Asolo mountaineering boots. You could breath in the adrenaline, the air was so thick with it.

I convinced someone working at the festival to let me take a ride on the closed zip line - boo yah!

I know this picture is out of focus, but it makes me happy, so I'm including it.

No climbing town, especially an ice climbing town, should be without its own hot springs. The only beef I had with this place was its ridiculous $12 entrance fee and bossy lifeguards, but you forget about that pretty quickly when you're soaking in a cozy 102 degrees under the starry mountain sky.

Take my word for it:  Ouray is the bomb diggity and you're not cool until you've been there.  

Just try not to drive back home through the mountain passes in a snowstorm.  It's not fun.