Grace
and I spent Christmas weekend in Ouray, which may become a tradition.
Ouray is an idyllic little town on the northwestern edge of the San Juan
range, nestled in a deep narrow valley of red and brown sedimentary
rock. The valley is so deep, steep, and narrow, I found myself wondering
if the town has to engage in avalanche control to prevent it being
buried on occasion.
The
main attraction for us though, was the Ouray Ice Park. I had always
assumed this was a privet concession that you'd have to pay to use, but
it's actually a public city park. In the winter, water is diverted from
an irrigation pipe to dribble over the edge of a narrow box canyon,
forming an amazing concentration of ice climbs in a gorgeous setting.
The canyon is so deep and narrow, it can feel pretty remote and
isolated, so long as you don't have someone climbing right next to you.
There's
little point in producing a laundry list of climbs. I doubt most of
them are named, as it's a nearly continuous half-mile long flow draping
the southwest edge of the canyon. We top-roped a bunch of stuff in the
WI 4-5 range, and I led a climb that was maybe 3+. One interesting thing
about climbing there is that you generally belay from the canyon rim,
with the climber being lowered in and then climbing back out. This
presents a bit of a challenge if you aren't used to it: what's the
safest, most efficient, and comfortable way to lower a climber and then
belay them back up?
The
simplest solution is just to belay off your harness, and redirect the
rope through the anchor, just like in a regular top-rope setup. But this
traps the belayer in the system, and isn't amenable to an autoblock
belay - really nice when the climber is doing something hard and needs
to hang often. The following system worked really well for us: setup an
autoblocking belay device (ATC Guide, or Reverso) as if you were going
to belay off your harness (normal, non-autoblock mode), but clip it to a
short sling instead of your belay loop. Clip the sling to the power
point of your anchor with a locker. Now redirect the break strand of the
rope through a second locker at the power point. This creates a very
smooth, easily controlled system for lowering off the anchor. Once the
climber has reached the bottom (or at least a stance where they can give
you slack), unclip the re-directed break strand and clip the eye of
your autoblock device into that locker instead. You are now setup with
an auto-blocking belay and you can start bringing the climber back up.
In order for this transition to work, the climber must be able to give
you some slack, but you never have to take them off belay. If their
position was particularly tenuous, you could for example tie off the
break strand before making the transition.
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