Ouray Ice Climbing

I took a little vacation to Ouray, CO with Kathy and our friends John and Samantha to go ice climbing for a few days. If you ever want to learn how to ice climb, then the Ouray Ice Park is the place to go. We climbed for two days, and would have stayed a little longer, but John scored us a really sweet place in Telluride, so we decided to spend a couple days over there as well.

You want to go ice climbing but never have? If you have rock climbed before and know how to belay and set up an anchor for a top rope, then you have the skills to go ice climbing in Ouray. Here's how:
* find 3 or 4 friends who also want to go
* supply everyone with crampons (steel, not the cheap aluminum ones), rigid boots (I have plastic boots) and a helmet. And a belay device.
* bring a couple ropes and a couple sets of ice tools (assuming 4 people in your party).
* bring a few ice screws and a half rope (30 meter 9mm or thicker) for anchors, as well as a few cordelettes and several locking carabiners. The amount of gear you bring obviously depends on the number of ropes that you want to set up at a time. We tried to set up two ropes side by side so that we could all climb together and switch back and forth on a couple different climbs.

The Ouray Ice Park is just a two minute drive outside of town in a canyon that is 20m - 50m deep. Sprinklers line the edges of the canyon, and every night they are turned on in order to build/rebuild all the frozen waterfalls that hang over the edge of the canyon. We climbed in the areas of South Park and New Funtier, which tended to be 25-30m deep and have slightly easier climbs than further down canyon, just about right for toproping on a 30m rope. A trail runs along the top edge of the canyon, and there are several access points where you can scramble down to the bottom. Most areas have trees growing somewhere near the canyon edge, which are good anchor points for a toprope. If the tree is close enough to the edge, you can use a cordelette to help build the anchor; otherwise, you can use the 30m rope as a super-long cordelette, running it from the tree to the upper edge of the climb. We liked to put an ice screw in right next to the main anchor point and clip it into the system as a "just in case" something happens to the tree or 30m rope. Rarely, a climb may not have a tree near it, in which case you may have to build an anchor completely from ice screws. Always have at least two anchor points in your system. If I were climbing solely on ice screws, I would put in three, but with our 30m rope, we were always able to find a tree that was within range of were we wanted to climb.

After setting up your topropes, you can hike down to the bottom of the canyon (or rappel your rope, but I avoid rappeling unless I cannot avoid it) and start ice climbing. It is like rock climbing at the gym, except that you have really sharp points in your hands and on your feet. Don't hit the rope with the sharp point and you should do fine. OK, maybe there are a couple more things to learn than "don't hit your rope with your ice tool", but the Ouray Ice Park is definitely a great place to learn and practice how to ice climb, and I highly recommend it.