The Ouray Ice festival and the art of breaking your teeth. pt 1.

My teeth hurt and my gums are bleeding slightly, but taking an adze to the teeth will do that to a guy. Maybe even to a girl (though during my stay in ouray I've seen countless guys with bleeding faces but no girls?). I keep forgetting how good the ice I'm climbing on is and that I don't need to swing my tool into the ice like it's the monkey from the old rockclimbing.com icon.

The Ouray ice park is a strange place indeed. You drive through the mountains, surrounding by inspiring peaks, then lower into a gorge from bolted anchors and toprope the finest ice all day long. Although the convinience takes something from the experiance it is damnz good fun and I've put more milage in in the last week and a bit then I did last season. You can easily climb a thousand feet of WI4+ ice in one day after a late start and be home in time for a late lunchoen.
Another strange pheonominon is the ice festival. The place was sleepy and quiet all week before the fest started, with the majority of lines in the park empty. Then comes the ouray ice fest, with cops handing out threats of arrest repeatidly in one night to several people for indecent exposure (erm, no one I know, of course), queues on most of the climbs, and little signs saying "Reserved for ice fest clinics" on all the others.
The only place where there were more climbers then the ice climbs was the gear stalls, where it seemed everyone except for me seemed to be scoring huge amounts of free shwag from just about every ice climbing company out there.
I did manage to snag a free timex digital compass watch, though, by sweet talking the dude at the stall. Handy since I left my old digi compass watch in the visitor centre near miguel's.
Unforunitly, as some people may have noticed, I don't have internet access readily avalible (not much posting lately) and have to yoink Cory's laptop and head down to the Silver Nugget (in my opinion the best pub in town) to get online.
Now how I met Cory is a lucky story. I was waiting in line at salt lake city airport for the grand junction flight (where I was going to meet Angry and get a lift down to Ouray, where we planned to camp or crash in the back of his truck, lacking anywhere solid to stay) when he and his girlfriend walk up to me, noticing the ice boots I wore to free up space in my luggage, and ask if I'm going to ouray. it was quickly realised that while he had a place to stay but lacked a ride down there, I had a ride down there but lakced a place to stay. A win win situation was had.

Expect part 2 soon, but the silver nugget is closing now.

RC.commers I met:

Reno - this dude is tall, and something about his build makes him seem even taller. I never met him while he was sober, but I guess I didn't make it on the sledding trips, either. Did I mention he was super tall? And had a chick on either side of him?

Redpointron - I narrowly missed him while I was stranded at the Red but managed to meet up with him at the ice park. We climbed one of the few naturally formed lines there.

Rheese_7 - I never climbed with her, but a good banter was had at the petzl/arcteryx party.

Thestatusquo - Again, I mostly just hung out at the petzl party and at the mexican bar the night before. Funny guy. We teamed up to start the well-recieved limbo compitition.

Geogoddess - Having bought myself a bright pink helmet to prove my manliness (or something like that) I commented on the fact that a nearby young lady had the same helmet. After a short convorsation I discovered that it was actually the geogoddess herself! We climbed a few lines nearby each other and had arranged to meet up at a later time but me running late made that fall through.

Mattb1921 - another cool guy, though I haven't been able to climb with him yet. Soon, though, since we're both around town.