Cody, Wyoming, Ice Fest Is a Chill of a Thrill

By Nicola Bridges

Ice festivals conjure images of castle carvings, igloos and snowmen with perhaps an enchanted ice maze. Far from that man-made carved winter wonderland, however, is a thrilling ice festival of a different caliber where daring ice climbers scale giant frozen mountain waterfalls and ice pillars with just a pair of ice tools, a safety rope, some ice screws, spiked boots, and a whole lot of guts, gumption and adrenaline.

Welcome to Wyoming Ice Fest in Cody, Wyoming, founded three years ago by explorer and ice-climber Aaron Mulkey. Seeing the daring climbers scale a cliff of sheer ice with the deft skill of Spiderman in insulated pants and a puffy jacket with literally just a pair of tentaclelike ice hooks and attached to just one safety rope terrifies me.

"It's really, really safe," laughs Mulkey. "It's like driving a racecar around a track at 150 mph. It can be incredibly dangerous, or you can make it incredibly safe."

Well, yes, but I wouldn't do that, either. Speed and heights are not my thing. But I love winter, am a sucker for snow and am fascinated as well as freezing just thinking about crawling up a vertical waterfall, my body close to a sheet of frozen water.

Mulkey assures me it's an absolutely amazing experience.

"When you're scaling the ice, you're thinking, 'I'm climbing this thing that is frozen in time,' and it allows you to adventure and explore parts of these beautiful mountains that you can't get to any other way."

Situated just outside the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park, Cody is a charming historic Western town known for cowboys, the longest-running nightly rodeo in the country, Buffalo Bill and its museums keeping the history of the Old American West alive.

In warm seasons the surrounding wilderness and sweeping vistas of Cody Yellowstone Country offer hiking through the Shoshone National Forest and foothills of the Absaroka Mountains, trail-riding, Jeep jaunts and fly-fishing at the North Fork of the Shoshone River.

For outdoor-lovers of a colder kind, the area is an untapped winter wonderland and home to the ice festival that takes place on the lower peak cliffs and crevices of the South Fork Valley, elevation ascending quickly from 7,000 to 10,000 feet.

January will be the third annual fest with spectators, experts and novice climbers attending as well as those new to the sport who just want to watch in jaw-dropping awe. The scenery is stunning. Just a 15- to 45-minute hike from the trailhead, Mulkey says, you feel like you're exploring a land frozen in time.

"There's so much here that's never been climbed before," he says. "It gives you what explorers of 100 years ago must have felt: the exhilaration of exploring in the mountains where you're the first to go."

Mulkey has almost 300 first-ascent ice climbs to his credit and was briefly a competitive ice-climber. But he prefers to climb naturally frozen water on a rockface versus the fake man-made ice pillars on the competitive side fashioned from plywood that can be manufactured to be much more difficult.

Out on the mountain, nature doesn't hold back when it comes to a challenge. The ice climbs are rated from WI (water ice) 2 to WI 7.

"There are lots of factors to consider when deciding what frozen flows to climb," Mulkey says, "how steep it goes and for how long, the thickness of the ice and temperature."

People (including me) think the colder the better for ice-climbing. Not true.

"Climbing is gorgeous at 35 to 45 degrees," Mulkey says. "The ice is supple and takes the impact of the ice hook going into it. The fun factor gets low in the single digits, and below zero it's not fun; it's about survival."

There's also no need to worry that ice-climbers are damaging the mountain. The only thing you're breaking down when you ice-climb is your stress level.

"When you reach up and throw in your tools and break ice, it's a great stress release," Mulkey says. "We're not destroying anything. Ice formation is constantly getting bigger as the running water source never stops freezing. The frozen flows and ice pillars are gone after they naturally melt anyway in the spring, so there's no damage done."

I'd rather keep my stress level and adrenaline base-lined at the bottom of the cliff, craning up at the climbers as they ascend higher, scaling the ice like ants up the ropes. Many who attend go just to hike in and watch or view it through binoculars from the warmth of their cars.

Mulkey says the festival is meant to be fun, bringing together the ice-climbing community and visitors to Cody who want to see a cool and different experience. There are ice-climbing clinics, and each evening culminates with a speaker. January keynotes include Alpinist and adventurist Eric Weinemyer, the first blind climber to conquer Everest.

"Ice Fest is about introducing new people to the sport and educating climbers to sharpen their skills," Mulkey says. "It's about being outdoors with the feeling of an explorer on the path less followed. Around Cody there's still so much of that, and that's the gold prize I'm looking for."

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WHEN YOU GO

Wyoming Ice Festival, Jan. 2 to 5, 2025. Attendance $25; clinics an additional fee. Register and view the schedule at www.wyoicefest.com.

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Nicola Bridges is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.