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Author: Evgeny
Krivosheitsev
Festiglace du Ouibec Ice festival
On February 18-20 2005 one of the most interesting ice festivals - Festiglace du Ouibec took place in the eighth time.
The site of the Festival is a wide river canyon located in several kilometers from the settlement of Pont Rouge. In winter the river is covered with a thick ice and you can safely walk through the all canyon. This place is very similar to a canyon in national natural Ouray park in Colorado where Ice festival runs yearly too in the middle of January. Pont Rouge canyon abounds with ice-falls and mixed routes. The unique shortcoming or the main difficulty of mixed-climbing there is a very loose shale rock that the mountains consist of there. And you should feel relief properly if you want successfully climb there. It's very important to choose a correct angle of tools' using - it would be better to move it only downwards or you will hardly pull it on yourself and the tool will just be spilled out with a heap of stones. All of this looks like you climb a wall consisting of horizontal books put one on another!
Sometimes you should just hammer the tool in sites of soft rock between shale layers - it is the most reliable variant of route sending. The main thing is not to get mixed over the layers and hammer in a firm layer - you will break the blade of your ice tool! Though all the routes seem not to hang very much you climb at full strain and you have to be fully stretched. It becomes easier only after you climb up to sites of water ice or icicles - they are the safest sites and you can relax a little there. Many routes go entirely on ice.
Rules of competitions with a view of safety demand to use not less than four ice screws on entirely ice routes as climbers are fearless people and ready to climb 30-meter icicles with two or even with one ice screw! The most interesting part of the festival - command competitions in difficulty! Only invited 16 ice-climbers that already have wide experience in mixed- and ice climbing take part in it. The contestants are balloted for places and matched into 8 pairs. The pairs can be mixed: man and woman. It is fair, because if judges allow the participants to choose partners off their own bat all strongest sportsmen will try to climb in one pair and obviously strong and obviously weak pairs will appear. By a toss-up a chance of that certainly can be too, but, at least, every climber is on an equal footing. This year the participants needed to climb maximum amount of the routes for six hours (earlier it was only five hours). In official point-count it's assumed sending a route by every climber of a pair. Climbers had to send the routes with using ice-screws and ice-axes and with no pre-clipped carabines. If one of climbers in a pair fall sending the route even right before finish, he should climb it again in other way he will not receive any points for this line. Each route costs the fixed number of points. Mixed lines are estimated three times as much as only ice routes. This time we had more than 40 lines to climb so that nobody had to queue there. If a pair was consisted of unequal sportsmen, the leader took over a business. He climbed the majority of the routes, working in the overall standings! We had no time even to have a bite. Almost everybody climbed non-stop and without any rest!
Sending two last routes I did not manage to clip at all: my hands were seized with cramp. And many climbers felt the same! Nearly all the pairs got falls: someone with a piece of ice, others with stones and someone just relaxed! It was really tough competitions! Jonatan Urness, a strong ice- and rock-climber from Montreal, was chosen by lot in my partner. We literally run off the first two routes and right then decided to try the most "expensive" and complex mixed line. I sent it first with all my might. Then Jonatan started but in five meters from the ground, during clipping his ice axe pulled up the piece of rock and Jonatan fell and jumped off downwards (He had luck that he had touch land both legs!) I thought that moment: "That's all! The end to the competitions! We can not climb any route more..."
Jonatan injured his right leg, and could hardly step on it. But the guy appeared with a strong character: he could organize himself, continue competitions and climb for five hours more with me the routes which he could to send. At the end he told me that his leg had been hurting very much, and he would have already surrendered and stop climbing right after his fall, if I had not arrived for thousand kilometers from Ukraine. In total we climbed: I - 9 routes and he- 7 ones, the majority of them were of the maximum grade and were estimated highly and that brought to us a victory! To tell the truth, we got only some points more, than a skilled pair of climbers that became the second. But they had climbed 15 only ice routes (that were estimated less points). Jonatan was, certainly, very happy, as well as I am. In spite of his hurt he did not slattern his efforts! On rewarding he jumped on one leg supported by his wife. The Results Team Competition 1st position 2nd position 3rd position 4th position 5th position 6th position 7th position 8th position 9th position 10th position Then there were competitions in speed where the Canadians tried but could not really resist to our climbing technique with use of fifi-hooks (the main ice-runner Will Gadd was absent). Some climbers borrowed my tools to climb but just the same they did not have enough experience! Individual Speed Competition 1st position 2nd position 3rd position 4th position 5th position For three days of the festival more than seven thousand spectators visited it. Some of them arrived even from Montreal (170km from Pont Rouge). I expected of course that except for me nobody from Ukrainian - Russian ice-climbers would arrive on this festival. But they really would have taken a huge experience here if they had come! Taking the opportunity, I would like to thank Red Fox Company for their support rendered to me in my trip to Canada.
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