The Wall Street Journal-20080130-Where Ice Climbing Is King

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Where Ice Climbing Is King

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Ouray, Colo. -- I'm hanging by my right arm from an ice tool jammed into an overhanging crack about 20 feet above a frigid creek at the bottom of the Uncompahgre Gorge. My other hand is desperately scratching higher into the crack with another ice tool trying to find a place to hook the pick. My forearms swell with lactic acid; it feels like battery acid coursing through my veins. I make a mental note to start practicing one-arm pull-ups.

Finally my second ice tool slots tightly into the fissure and I crank up, my crampons scraping uselessly against the rock looking for purchase. The upper ice tool pops out and suddenly my whole body is hanging from the lower ax.

"I know it feels weird at first," says Josh Wharton, my climbing coach for the afternoon.

Actually, it feels like I'm trying to pull my own arms out of their sockets. The technical term for this is "mixed climbing" (typically a little ice and a lot of rock climbing using axes and crampons).

At some point as I'm being lowered to the ground on the rope that was safeguarding my attempted climb, it occurs to me that maybe I should just stick to ice climbing. I am, after all, at the Ouray Ice Festival, an annual event that draws thousands from around the world to this once-sleepy mining town set in a beautiful box canyon along the Uncompahgre River in southwestern Colorado.

Ouray is the ice-climbing capital of the U.S. Climbers first frequented the area in the 1970s, lured by blue ribbons of frozen waterfalls dripping down canyons in the San Juan Mountains. In 1994 a few enterprising locals had the idea to string PVC pipe and showerheads along the top of a gorge above town and create their own ice. The result was the Ouray Ice Park, where every winter a mile of the canyon is draped in curtains of frozen water.

"Ouray," writes guidebook author Cameron M. Burns, "makes one believe God is an ice climber."

The park, which is run by a nonprofit organization, is free to climbers, although annual memberships are sold to help with operating costs.

In 1996 the park began holding the Ouray Ice Festival, usually over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, which brings together world-class climbers, gear vendors and Gumbies (a derogatory term for amateurs) like me.

I recently moved near Ouray to try to improve my climbing; the only thing worse than my ice climbing is my winter driving (the score after my first two days in Colorado: snowbanks, 2; Mike, 0). At the festival I took part in several clinics, run by expert climbers such as Steve House and Jack Roberts, whose book "Colorado Ice" is the standard work on the subject. I practiced climbing ice with only one tool; then with none, which forced me to concentrate on my footwork, using my hands only for balance. I bashed my way up ice pillars and swung tools until I thought my arms would fall off.

But the high point, so to speak, of the entire weekend was the competition. I was down in the gorge attending one clinic when someone shouted that Will Mayo, an Alpinist from Vermont, was climbing. Everyone down in the canyon (with the possible exception of the person in our group then climbing) looked upriver to where the ice maven was dry tooling his way across a seemingly blank section of overhanging rock -- that is, he was hooking his ice-tool picks and crampon points on tiny features and effortlessly ascending the wall like a gecko. Most of the competitors had fallen off the route by this point, but Mr. Mayo moved up the stone the way water flows downhill. He made hard mixed climbing look as easy as walking, casually clipping his rope into protection bolts every few feet.

Mr. Mayo quickly reached the top of the gorge, where rock gives way to ice, and paused just long enough to drop one of his ice tools. Then, in an amazing burst of athleticism, he pulled through the short ice section with a single tool and jumped across to the first of two logs suspended vertically below a bridge. Wrapping his legs around the swaying pole and swinging his single tool above his head, Mr. Mayo began clawing his way up the log. Then he fell, the rope catching him after several feet. The crowd broke into sustained applause.

During that afternoon, 17 of the best climbers in the world tried to scale the competition route. Only a few even got beyond the second log, where you have to climb a wooden board overhanging by 45 degrees with only a few plastic gym holds mounted on the underside. The final move required a long jump to hook your tools over the top. French climber Jeff Mercier was the only one to make it.

I felt exhausted just watching the comp. But I came to Ouray to hone my skills (which were as dull as my crampon points after my misguided mixed climbing attempt), so the next day I went climbing with a couple of locals, Dan and Charlie, both of whom are retired and passing their sunshine years climbing ice with the enthusiasm of teenagers. Charlie is 70.

"Ice is never the same," says Dan. "It's always changing, which is what I like about it."

Some days are more likeable than others. If the weather is too warm, the ice is wet and slushy, running with water that soaks you to the bone. Once in the Canadian Rockies I was climbing what looked from a distance like a frozen waterfall -- but several hundred feet above the ground the icy veneer began breaking up and holes appeared where free- flowing water gushed below. Seldom have I ever climbed faster.

Perfect ice, on the other hand, is plastic, blue and fat. A single swing lands with a reassuring thunk and you could hang a car off the stick.

My first outing with Charlie and Dan wasn't anything like that. The day was cold (in the low 20s); the ice was brittle, prone to shattering whenever you swung your tool, which is to say every time you tried to move. At some point I noticed blood on the ice below me. Imagine punching a mirror above your head and you get some idea of what a face full of ice feels like. Later when I glanced in the car mirror it looked like I had been in a fight, my face decorated with thick gobs and streaks of dried blood. Ice kisses, one of my climbing partners calls them.

I got off easy. Charlie came up the climb after me. He dislodged a bowling-ball-sized chunk of ice, which he momentarily stopped from falling with his chin. It took five stitches to close the gash. At the ER in nearby Montrose, the doctor told Charlie that 90% of the facial lacerations he treats are from ice climbing.

Next time I go climbing, I'm going to practice one skill I didn't learn in any clinic: ducking.

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Mr. Ybarra is the author of "Washington Gone Crazy."