Ice Climbing

Ryan Vachon shares his thoughts from the 2022 Ouray Ice Festival.

Jeff stumbles across a hidden cave on social media, and seeks it out. He finds a cave of dreams.

It was a usual winters night in the van. I struggled to sleep with the anticipation of the early alarm weighing heavy on my mind and the stormy weather pounding the skylight just a couple of feet above my face.

At the end of January, Jeff Mercier and I met up in the north of Norway for two weeks of hunting winter climbs above the Arctic Circle. Two seasons ago we did a similar trip to Senja Island, where we managed to climb a bunch of outstanding new routes and witnessed some amazing views and landscapes.

“This isn't the forest or even the snow, there are no rocks, no trails or footprints, no plants or flowers- this is ice. And guess what: it changes every single day.”

This winter I wanted to climb, to climb rock only! I spent a lot of time in the mountains the past seasons working as a mountain guide and this fall I wanted to train a lot and push my rock climbing level. But it’s rare for a plan to run without a hitch. Winter is here, lots of ice, no snow, many friends wanting to climb steep ice… as we say in Pyrenees “Porque no” - Why not!

Greg Boswell and Jeff Mercier may have set a record for the speed at which they established new winter routes when they visited the Island of Senja off Norway’s North West coast in February 2018. 

For anyone unfamiliar with the region, New Zealand is probably best known in recent times as Middle Earth. An association created when these dramatic islands famously became the cinematic depiction of Tolkien’s epic.