Ouray Day 6: 1/30

 Ski Purgatory

Day 5 Sunday 1/29

 The weekend

Day 4: Saturday: Telluride 1/28

 Telluride was expensive.

Day 3 : New Funteir 1/27

 The crew set up on the lower, longer climbs in the New Funtier. Most of the crew came down some fixed lines but we came down to checkout the classic downclimb which is part of the via ferrata. ALmost better to do tis without crampons until you get down.

Ouray Day-1 January 26

 The crew made their way down to the School room.

Day 2 Ouray: South Park

This image was taken the night we arrived. We searched and could not spot the club sticker right away; I placed the sticker when the brewery opened whenever that was.

We get up at 0630 and Emily & Bill, our new hosts, provide us with hot breakfasts to see us through a days climbing in the park.

We use to leave our rooms at 0730 and work ourselves into a lather in the 15 min walk up to the park and by the time we reached the bridge, we'd be ready to climb....Now a days, the bus (our rental car) would leave at 0745 sharp to be there at the shack to gear up.

By the 2nd day we should have had a routine down where you plop down, put on your harness, crampons, take off layers, put on your helmet and rush to the anchor of your choice. I would haul ass so I could claim whatever route I selected at breakfast. As the weekend rolled around, there would be more and more people and  being efficient when you geared up saved you a walk to south park.

I talked about maybe arriving on a Monday, instead of a Tuesday in 2019. This would give us 3 days in the park to climb, with Friday being the rest day to ski somewhere when the ice park becomes a frozen zoo with weekend climbers.

VIDEO

Day One 2018: School Room

Once we got situated in our new ownership digs at the comfort Inn and arrived on time the day before, we got to the nearly deserted ice park vacated after the biggest Ouray Ice Festival ever a few days earlier. I decided to take the group photo as soon as I thought about it. Every year we take a picture and half the folks flake out or something. 2 of the climbers pictured, Alina and Mack, summited Mount Everest last year on separate expeditions, but they saw each other at base camp. This was Mack's 3rd attempt. The 2nd attempt ended in tragedy when 5 members of his team perished during the earthquake that struck in 2015.

With the experience of 8 consecutive seasons at the same time of year, we wasted no time in claiming ice routes in the nearby School Room.

These routes are oh so simple to set up as the park provided bolts and chains to facilitate a safe and convenient anchor setup.

There have been improvements at the School room and most of you who dread the down climb into this area will appreciate the following images.

Ice Park Engineering