Lake CIty Ice Festival

So even with the 2 feet of snow that fell along the front range, Jeremy Stocks and myself decided to give it a shot and drive out to Lake City for the weekend and the Epic Lake City Ice Festival.  We headed out about 4pm.  From Denver and stopped for a few beers and dinner in Gunnison at the trough.  We made it by about 9pm.  Met at Patrick Kellys house.  Patrick is one of the organizers of this event and Id like to give a big thanks for letting us crash.  We Hung out with a few of patricks friends Lucky, Tom and Erik. Erik is attempting to be the 2nd person to snowboard all of CO's 14'ers, Please check out: 14er snowboard project  We had a few beers then went to sleep to blasting music.

Woke up to a beautiful morning and a blamy -8 degrees.  We made breakfast and headed over to the Ice.  Patrick had already been over setting everything up.  THey got a Fire going, Played some music, and had some Hot food.

When we arrived, Maddog was hanging the screws for the speed competition.  THe competitions were 20$ to enter each with a top rope and a lead comp.  We soon realized a 70 meter rope was pushing it to top rope most of these climbs.  We did find a small corner to set up and do some laps.

Photo of another climber.  Maya? maybe.  We chatted, turns out we do a similar job for work which was strange.

Also check out The Winning Run on the speed Lead Comp.  

Patrick Kelley topping out on the Lead Comp.

Climbers and spectators.

left hand side of icefall

There was a nead mixed line Jeremy was itching to get on.  Unfortunately, there was no way to protect the rock portion of the climb, the rock is to flakey and chossy to place gear.  So he decided to top rope it and Killed it.

This was definitely one of the best Ice Festivals I have ever been too.  Make sure you check it out next year.  Ill be there.  Rumor has it a Hostle type accomidation will be available.    We headed out the next morning due to an overindulgence on my part of the local spirits.  We stopped for Breakfast in Gunnison at the coffee shop.  Ate a slammin Burrito and ran into another climber from the festival, Lindsay.  We chatted a bit and welcomed her to come climb out our way and left.  

Please check out the other Youtube Videos and http://www.lakecityiceclimbs.com/