Lake City Ice Festival
The famous Ouray Ice Festival is happening January 7-10 this winter, and it should be a blast, highlighted this year by Will Gadd’s Endless Ascent: 24 hours of non-stop ice climbing. But Ouray is not the only ice climbing festival in the Centennial State:
• January 2-3: Durango Ice Demo
• February 5-7: Redstone Winterfest, sponsored in part by Carbondale-based Rock and Ice magazine.
• February 27: Lake City Ice Fest
Will Gadd’s Endless Ascent, in which he climbed more than 25,000 feet of ice in 24 hours during the Ouray Ice Festival, raised about $10,000 for the Ridgway-based dZi Foundation; that total was matched by a generous donor to yield a total of $20,000 for dZ’s Revitalize a Village project in eastern Nepal. To see [...]
By Dan Escalante and Dougald MacDonald
If Ouray and its ice park are starting to feel like Boulder West, consider a trip to Lake City and its low-key ice park and superb backcountry climbs. It’s no closer to Front Range cities than Ouray, and there aren’t as many climbs to choose from, but Lake City is [...]
Boulder-based photographer James Beissel sent us a fun gallery of images from the 15th annual Ouray Ice Festival. Earlier this week, we published Beissel’s gallery of photos from Will Gadd’s 24-hour ice climbing ultra-marathon.
Photographer James Beissel sent us this fantastic dawn-patrol shot of the full moon setting over South and North Arapaho in the Indian Peaks, shot from Flagstaff Mountain. Said Beissel: ”The first full moon of the New Year is often called the Wolf Moon. The name comes from Native American culture, in which it was associated with [...]
By Bob Berwyn
Stakeholders in the San Luis Valley have taken a giant step toward protecting Great Sand Dunes National Park from mining, energy development, and water exports. Lexam Explorations has agreed to sell its mineral rights if a $9.7 million deal can be finalized by May.
Great Sand Dunes National Park was created by Congress [...]
Jason Haas, who’s working on a new guidebook to South Platte rock climbs, has just redpointed what’s likely the Platte’s hardest pitch, a roof seam that’s protected with removable pro and might be 5.14a. The new route, Comprometido, took about a year and a half to complete. Here, Haas tells the story.
While researching routes [...]
Let’s say you’d like to try some sport-mixed routes, but you aren’t into fruit boots and cranking figure-nines. Until recently, your options have been limited at East Vail, the mecca of modern mixed climbing. But this season, several new climbs have been added to the Firehouse West and Spiral Staircase areas, and at M6 to [...]
On Saturday, Andy Grauch and Chris Sheridan completed a wild line on the south face of Mt. Otis in Rocky Mountain National Park—almost certainly a new route. Chockstones of Unusual Size (C.O.U.S.) is a three-pitch route (plus snow slogging) that surmounts two stupendous blocks by tricky dry tooling: III M6/7. We asked Andy Grauch to [...]
Kevin Landolt is a skier/climber/student, based in Fort Collins, who writes the fun Alpine Ambition blog for the Mountain Shop. Here, Kevin describes a favorite midwinter ski tour near Cameron Pass offering a little of everything.
Trailhead: Lake Agnes Road, 2.5 miles west of Cameron Pass
Tour Distance: 7.3 miles
Total Vert: ca. 2,900′
Season: Midwinter to spring; two [...]
Two of the wildest and most difficult water-ice pitches in the state are in plain view from Highway 50, en route to Ouray and Telluride from points north, plunging down the sheer face of Grand Mesa. Yet few people notice them, and far fewer have climbed them. The routes are tough, to be sure, but [...]
Mt. Bancroft’s rocky east ridge is a terrific mountaineering adventure for Front Range climbers, beginning less than an hour from Denver. The 13,250-foot peak is relatively close to the road, and avalanche danger can be easily managed, making this perhaps the most accessible technical winter summit on the entire Front Range. The east ridge offers [...]
Michael Barton of Mountain Goat Ski Guides in Silverton offers up this classic route off Red Mountain Pass. It’s more of an early-spring route than a midwinter tour, but now you can put it on the hit list. How good is this route? Says Barton: It’s out of my permit boundary, so I don’t [...]
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