Photos: http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=174188895/a=38054161/t_=38054161
Every year, Ouray holds an Ice Festival ( http://www.ourayicefestival.com/ ) at the world famous ice park there ( http://www.ourayicepark.com/ ). It's a great event, drawing the best ice climbers from all over the world. We have gone to it for the past three years; and it's pretty cool. The festival usually goes from Thursday through Sunday. We usually head in on Saturday early morning; so we can watch some of the competition, hang out on Saturday night (the night with the most going on), and test out some new gear on Saturday and Sunday. The festival winds down on Sunday, so we continue to climb for the next couple of days.
It works out well. Saturday is a little climbing, and watching some of the competitions; a good warm-up. Sunday is a little more climbing as things wind down, and then Monday and Tuesday are full on climbing.
This year, we had nine in my group. Stuart, Jonas, Misty, Jenia, James, Andrzej, Ben, Jen and I. There were also two other groups there that I knew so we hooked up with them at various times over the weekend.
However, this was smack dab in the middle of the busy time of dealing with the house stuff. Had I not already had reservations for this hard to reserve event, I probably would have passed. A good indication of how busy things were, is that this is probably the first trip ever that I actually forgot my camera. Thus, these pictures are from Jonas and Stuart (thanks guys.) The bonus is that I actually have some pictures of me!
There are also some good shots of the burly climbers competing on the mixed rock and ice route, and some slacklining (walking along a piece of webbing across the canyon.) Hope you enjoy the photos!
Photos: http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=174188895/a=38054161/t_=38054161
Group Room (multiple albums): http://ajoutdoors.snapfish.com/snapfish