In the shadows of the Uncompaghre Gorge, Sonya Wilson carefully swung her ice axe and kicked her crampons up a frosty pitch.

Hooked into belayers watching from above, neighboring climbers treading up the ice punctuated the cold air with shouts of climbing commands.

When Wilson needed to communicate with her belayer while ascending, she briefly let go of the axe to tug on her rope or sign to an American Sign Language translator standing across the way on the park’s Upper Bridge. The translator then relayed their conversation via radio to Wilson’s belayer who couldn’t see her over the steep drop into the gorge. The belayer responded to the command and Wilson continued marching up the ice.

It was a new three-point system the parties were trying out so Wilson, a longtime rock climber and member of the Deaf community, could rappel down a route for the first time.

Wilson, who is from California, was one of three deaf climbers from three different states attending the All in Ice Festival where there were four translators to provide access for all climbers. In its fourth year at the Ouray Ice Park, the event is held to celebrate, support and bring together climbers from marginalized communities.

***

Five years ago, festival founder Liz Sahagún had returned from a road trip through Minnesota, Montana, Utah and Colorado she planned for her birthday: before turning 30 she wanted to climb with 30 people from underrepresented communities.

The trek was based in building, supporting and meeting that community along the way.

During her trip Sahagún, who is Mexican American, connected with fellow festival founders Mari Simpson-Hirata, who is Okinawan American, and Claire Larson while ice climbing in Bozeman, Montana when the group started talking about a festival format. They cemented an aim of celebrating the community they had found amongst each other — that of people with intersecting, underrepresented identities — and creating more professional development opportunities for folks in climbing and creatives.

The time was ripe as the nationwide movement to increase diversity and access in the outdoors and climbing spaces had picked up after 2020, Sahagún said.

Sahagún had also planned a stop at the Ouray Ice Park during her road trip to climb with a group of Latina women, when she approached Ice Park Executive Director Peter O’Neil about the idea for the festival.

The ice park had also recently hired Office Manager & Event Coordinator Christina Lujan, who got behind the idea and became another festival co-founder.

So in 2022, Sahagún and the planning team partnered with the Ouray Ice Park to put on the first All In Ice Festival, centering on celebrating the intersections of different communities and identities including Black, Indigenous and people of color, LGBTQIA2S+ individuals and adaptive climbers.

“People are hungry for it. They’ll show up,” she said.

The event lowers the barriers to entry for the expensive sport through partnering with outdoor gear sponsors that allow registered participants to borrow gear for free while trying courses ranging from ice climbing basics to more technical steep climbing.

In its fourth year, the event attracted returning climbers who were introduced to the sport during their first festival.

All of the 29 guides coordinated by Ridgway-based Moxie Mountain Guides identified with at least one of the underrepresented communities served by the festival and worked with a mix of them. Wilson hosted a training workshop for guides working with deaf climbers ahead of the festival.

It’s important that the festival is led by members of those communities because it allows people to feel comfortable trying new things and build close relationships, Simpson-Hirata said.

***

All weekend people belted into ropes or crunching around in crampons wove around the park’s Kid’s Wall, called the Demo Wall for the festival, and other climbing areas chatting with people they met that day and revisiting friendships created during past festivals.

Folks from the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes, invited to the event for the past three years, opened the festival on Friday. Attendance from those groups increased over the past couple of years.

This year a new Navajo Nation climbing group, the Diné Summit Seekers, attended. They opened each climb with a prayer, said Emile Eich.

The youngest member of the group – 12-year-old Nala Nelson – tried ice climbing for the first time.

Her first day, Nelson scaled eight climbs and was the last on the Demo Wall on Saturday as the snow started falling and people cleared out of the park.

“I wanted it to be a good experience because I’ve never gone ice climbing before,” she said. “And I wanted to add something to my athletics.”

It was Langstyn Avery’s fourth time attending the festival, this time with a group of around 20 members of Negus in Nature, an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to “empowering the Children of the African Diaspora communities and their allies to reclaim their connection with nature and become leaders in environmental justice.”

Avery, a regular rock climber, first attended the event as a brand ambassador, dodging invitations to get on the ice. But by the end of the weekend Salt Lake City-based guide Nikki Smith convinced him to try it out. Each year since, he’s recruited more people to visit Ouray for the event.

The festival teemed with climbers, guides and volunteers of diverse experience levels and identities — elite athletes like Jessica Perez, a member of the USA Ice Climbing Team — to Gerry Egbalic, who attended the festival in 2023 to try ice climbing for the first time and returned this year as a newly certified American Mountain Guides Association guide.

Egbalic, who uses the pronouns he and they, decided to become a guide so people from underrepresented communities could better relate to outdoor leaders like themselves.

“It’s amazing to be on the other side now being able to coach people and having them relate to how you talk to them. It’s a great feeling,” they said.

Egbalic decided to take a swing at becoming a guide at the second All In Ice Festival, after gathering the courage to launch a crowdfund to pay for the guiding course, which their community rapidly rallied around.

The All In Ice Fest is their first time putting that guiding certification to work, which feels good.

“It’s just like full circle for me, you know. This is how I started, this is the event where I realized guiding is something I want to do,” they said. “So this is very meaningful to me.”

Sahagún said next year she’s looking to not only be inclusive, but expansive, actively bringing as many people into the fold as possible.

“If you invite people, they will show up,” she said.

Lia Salvatierra is a journalist with Report for America, a service program that helps boost underserved areas with more reporting resources.