After weeks of planning for the worst, the Ouray Ice Park has ice to offer after all, just in time for the 31st Ice Festival this weekend.
Ice Park Executive Director Peter O’Neil has spent the past two weeks religiously checking the forecast, praying temperatures would drop and remain low after a stretch of impossibly warm winter weather, precluding ice farmers from making climbable ice and opening the park, which is normally crawling with climbers in December.
But O’Neil’s prayers — and those of the broader community who rely on the park as an economic engine — were met by a cold front that came through about a week ago.
The weeklong cold spell had made up enough lost time and ice to allow the Ice Park to open Wednesday morning.
“It really is sort of a resurrection of the Ice Park,” O’Neil said.
“We are resurrecting an ice season when two weeks ago, we didn’t even know if we were going to have an ice season,” he said.
Just two weeks earlier, O’Neil stood before Ouray city leaders, informing them of grim conditions at the park and staff’s plans to refashion the Ouray Ice Festival as an ‘Ice(less)’ event. Last week, the park officially canceled festival clinics that involved ice climbing in the park and launched alternatives such as clinics on dry tooling, rescue techniques and even rock climbing.
But tonight, O’Neil will return to the city council meeting with news of the park’s imminent opening, and details about expanded activities for the festival. The warm conditions prompted officials to open the Ouray Via Ferrata for guided climbs, which is normally closed November through April.
“We’re trying to pull out all the stops to make sure there’s lots of reasons for people to come to town,” O’Neil said.
The ice farmers at the Ouray Ice Park have been able to create ice at the last minute, building pillars of ice in the days leading up to the festival. The park is opening to climbers on Wednesday, Jan. 21, after weeks of too-warm temperatures preventing the ice from forming on the canyon walls. Erin McIntyre – Ouray County Plaindealer
O’Neil said he first started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel Jan. 8, after receiving a photo from longtime ice farmer Tim Foulkes taken at 5 a.m. — showing the solid results of a night of farming ice walls in the Uncompahgre Gorge.
“That’s when I first had hope that we were going to run water again,” O’Neil said.
“Up until then, it was like, ‘Are we even going to have a season?’”
The park’s ice farmers have been toiling away since, building out as much ice climbing terrain as possible. Foulkes said ice conditions are still uneven around the park — ice is especially thin at the sunny southern end of the park. But there will be 168 anchors available for climbing tomorrow.
Both Foulkes and O’Neil said the park’s opening comes as a huge relief, with the last couple of weeks demonstrating its significance to Ouray’s winter economy.
“I think, I hope, everyone understands, after those last two weeks, why the Ice Park is important to the community in the winter,” O’Neil said.
O’Neil acknowledged the length of the park’s season remains at the mercy of Mother Nature — the return of rain and warm temperatures could make the park unsafe for climbing.
“If we had a torrential rainstorm at the end of February, there’s nothing we can do,” O’Neil said.
But he said the park’s ice farmers are working to craft resilient, thick ice that can outlast warmer temperatures.
“At least, we have hopes for a season, because now we have thick ice,” he said.
Lia Salvatierra is a journalist with Report for America, a service program that helps boost underserved areas with more reporting resources.
