By Sue Bergstrom for Valdez City News –
The Valdez Ice Climbing Festival was started in 1983 and it continues to grow. This year’s festival was the biggest ever. Participation in this year’s event doubled for the third year in a row. On Saturday approximately three hundred climbers took part, compared to one hundred sixty-seven in 2015 For an event that takes place in a small town in Alaska, that’s impressive. The event draws people through Facebook, the internet and word of mouth. Climbers talk to other climbers, they look to see where they’ve been, they trade stories. And Valdez gets great word of mouth. The Festival was founded by the late Andy Embick and Brian Teale, who was also in attendance this year. They ran it through 2002. In 2003 the festival was taken over by the Ice Pixies. It was meant to become a women’s event but the men kept coming anyway, so eventually it became officially co-ed again.
Since last year’s festival, Nick Weicht who has been running the event since 2008, has been pivotal in the formation of a non-profit which now produces the event with the sponsorship of the American Alpine Club. Levitation 49 is a sports commission dedicated to economic diversification through the development and promotion of events and projects that support the year-round mountain sports lifestyle in Valdez. It is supported in part by a Community Sustaining Organization grant from the City of Valdez.
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Highlights of the 2016 Event:
• Friday-Locals joined guests at the Civic Center ballroom for a showing of Mountainfilm on Tour, a collection of films focused on mountain culture. About 280 people enjoyed the films introduced by Ice Fest guest, photographer Ace Kvale. Kvale, who started out as a ski model, has thirty years of experience taking outdoor photographs all over the world.
• Saturday-The She Jumps Women’s Clinic, presented by climber and guide Emily Escapule, sold out quickly, so additional instructors were added to help introduce about fifty women to the sport of ice-climbing. She Jumps is a national non-profit dedicated to introducing more women to adventure sports. Locals who assisted included Kirsten Kremer, Mackenzie Jones and Sunny Hamilton. Nova Guide afternoon co-ed clinics for beginning and intermediate climbers also sold out.
• Sunday-The speed climbing was the highlight of the day. This event is focused on sharing the fun and camaraderie of ice climbing on the top ropes set up by Levitation 49’s team of top Alaska climbers. Nick Weicht won the competition, which pitted pairs of climbers against each other and the clock on a 200 foot route, with a time of 9:29. Second place went to sixty-two-year-old Bruce McVaugh of Golden Colorado who came in just twelve seconds behind Weicht. The only woman to enter this competition was local heli-skiing guide and mountaineer Kirsten Kremer, who finished in the middle of the field of seventeen competitors.
• The weekend ended with a Bonfire Feast that included food, an aerial skill performance, music and dancing in the falling snow.
