(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
The end of January brought my annual trip to Ouray, Colorado, home of the Ouray Ice Festival and the Chicks With Picks Festival. Last year, I climbed with George Dunn, however after the fiasco I experienced in the Alps, I decided to climb with a company I was more comfortable with, Skyward Mountaineering. I was looking forward to climbing with Vince Anderson, a well established ice climber, but he took a nasty fall earlier in the year and had broken his foot. Vince hooked us up with a great replacement, Sven Krebs.
Day 1, Sven
took
us to South Park, a relatively new area of the
ice park. Joining me on this trip was
my girlfriend Ellen
, who had never been ice climbing
before. To begin, Sven taught Ellen the basics of ice climbing, which became a
great refresher course for me. Our first pitches were quite easy and required us
to climb without tools, so that we could work on our footwork.
Ellen picked this up really, well, so we quickly progressed to adding one tool.
Remarkably, Ellen picked up the toolwork fairly well too, even though
the
tools were leashless! I had always heard that it was easier to
learn ice climbing with leashless tools, but I never believed it.
After climbing this week with
Grivel
Top Wing w/ trigger finger and the
Charlet
Moser Ergo I became a true believer. I'll never climb with leashed tools
again. Anyway, we stopped for some lunch
, after which we moved to a
slightly harder route.
. Elle really seemed to be doing
good on this route, so it was time for me to take a whack at it.
(video)
. All videos take a long time to download - be patient! - and you'll need either
WindowsXP or QuickTime to watch them. After doing a couple fun laps on this
route, Sven took us up one final route so that he could show Ellen how to repel.
After doing a couple repels, day 1 was complete. Elle and I went back to the
Vic for a well deserved soak in a hot
tub and a couple beers.
The next day we found ourselves
climbing in the sun of the
lower gorge
(video).
It was an absolutely perfect day, and Elle and I took a couple laps on an easy
route. 
,
meanwhile there were a couple climbers doing harder routes
next to us (video)
. Once we had dialed in the easy
route, we took a crack at the harder route to our right. This route had some
vertical ice (Class 4/5- ) which became our first real test of the trip.
You'll see me here (video) getting ready to tackle
the vertical section. I successfully topped out, then Ellen took a stab. This
was by far the hardest climb she had so far.
. This became a real tester for
her, as she took her first fall of the week (video),
but she hung in there and topped out. All in all, this was a great morning of
climbing - here's a final picture of the 2 routes we climbed
.
One of the perks of climbing in Ouray, is that you can leave the park at anytime
and grab lunch which is
what we did on the second day.
After a nice big burger, we
repelled 
into to the schoolroom area
to practice multipitch climbing.
Here's a couple shots I took
from the belay station halfway up the route.
After topping out on this route,
we called it a day.
The last day we headed to
Skylights to do some climbing on real waterfalls. The first route, Skylight,
was a multipitch route - probably around 4 pitches, but because of the ice
conditions, we chose to only climb the first two pitches. Here's the view from
the top of the first pitch
(video)
. Elle had a challenge going up the chimney
, but at least she didn't get hit
in the head by falling ice
(OUCH!). After we both topped
out (and I had blood dripping from my face), we repelled to the bottom, ate some
lunch and prepared for another route. At this point, we were both pretty tired
from 3 days of climbing, so we picked an easier pitch
that
gave us plenty of options. For my final pitch, I thought I'd take everything I
had learned over the three days and try some mixed climbing
.
This forced me to drytool part of the pitch and really concentrate on my
technique. I successfully topped out on this pitch (video)
and was extremely happy. That became the final pitch for both of us, and we
called it a day. We both learned a ton on this trip and improved immensely.
We both can't wait to do this trip again next year! Kudos to Sven and Skyward Mountaineering. If you plan on going climbing anytime soon, I'd highly recommend going with them!