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Record-breaking warm temperatures across the West have made a wet, soppy mess of a lot of winter sports like skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling. Anything that needs it to be freezing cold just did not happen. Well, in Colorado, the Ouray ice climbing park finally opened one month later than normal, and Colorado Public Radio's Stina Sieg went to watch from her spot safely on the ground.
(SOUNDBITE OF AXES CHIPPING ICE)
STINA SIEG, BYLINE: Mammoth ice sheets coat a sheer rock wall the height of a four-story apartment building. Might sound imposing, but this is the beginners area for first-time ice climbers like Ken Iida.
KEN IIDA: It's awesome (laughter). So much fun. I never thought I'd get to try this at any point in my life, so I'm just happy to be out here, you know (laughter)?
SIEG: The Ouray Ice Park is set in a narrow box canyon in the Rocky Mountains. On this day, snow flurries swirl around the ice-curious. Each climber is roped in. They kick their spiked boots into the frozen waterfalls, using an axe in each hand to inch slowly up.
(SOUNDBITE OF ICE SPLINTERING)
SIEG: It's a scene accomplished climber Corey Buhay had to wait a long time for. Until recently, much of the gorge was bare rock.
COREY BUHAY: We were ready to climb mud, we were ready to climb plywood, whatever they could hand us.
SIEG: Finally, temperatures dropped.
BUHAY: I think everybody just feels like it's Christmas morning. You know, we're just so delighted to have real winter conditions.
SIEG: The ice park's executive director, Peter O'Neil, calls it a resurrection.
PETER O’NEIL: I got a grin on my face because it's like, oh, I'm so happy. I've been able to sleep at night for the last week.
SIEG: To create these iconic walls of blue ice more than 100 feet high, Mother Nature needs a little help. When it gets cold enough to freeze, ice farmers, as they're called, open 2 miles of pipes that line the cliffs' edges, then hundreds of sprinklers spray water onto the rocks to build the formations. Ice farmer Tim Foulkes says they kept waiting for it to get cold enough to do their job. But then it snowed, which had to be shoveled by volunteers because climbable ice can't form over snow.
TIM FOULKES: For people to actually come out and then be willing to get on a rope and shovel vertically is a big deal. It's really hard. And we had so many people. They shoveled everything. They shoveled all the horizontal stuff. And we were able to turn water right back on and it made it happen.
SIEG: Ice climbing has given life to the tiny community of Ouray. Climber Mica Hart grew up here and heard stories of what this former Colorado mining town used to be in the winter - like a ghost town. Now the park draws tens of thousands of ice climbers each year.
MICA HART: And that's a huge deal for keeping businesses open and keeping our town alive. And having that be undermined by global warming and the changing weather and climate is really, really scary.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Cheering).
SIEG: Kevin Schiffer got his daughter into the sport, and now she's so into it, she'll soon take part in an ice competition in Europe. Standing on a bridge, Schiffer has a nervous, proud grin as he looks down 200 feet to where 16-year-old Zoe starts to race up the wall of ice and rock.
(CHEERING)
KEVIN SCHIFFER: Go, Zoe.
SIEG: She makes it farther up than she ever has before a buzzer sounds. Some of Schiffer's friends don't get how he can let his kid do something that would petrify most people.
SCHIFFER: When you see how much she is excited about it and how happy it makes her, it's pretty easy (laughter).
(CHEERING)
SIEG: When Zoe Schiffer finds her dad, she's got an ecstatic smile. It only drops when she talks about the future of her sport in a warming climate.
ZOE SCHIFFER: It's absolutely terrifying. I - like, this is what I do, is what I love doing. And it would be so sad if it wasn't this.
SIEG: She's only been ice climbing two years and hopes for a world where she can ascend these chandeliers of ice the rest of her life. For NPR News, I'm Stina Sieg in Ouray, Colorado.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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