Lillooet Ice Fest 2023

I've been interested in ice climbing for a while, but it's a tricky thing to get started with. The gear is expensive, there's a lot of essential knowledge, and it's honestly kinda dangerous. So when my friend Spencer told me about the Lillooet Ice Fest and asked if I wanted to come, I didn't take much convincing.

The group got smaller as we approached the weekend of the trip. The final team was me, Preston, Alex, and Spencer. We also were meeting a pair of brothers from Seattle at the festival. We left after class on Friday and began the 4 hour drive north. After a smooth border crossing and one or two wrong turns, we parked behind the small Hotel DeOro in Lillooet. Spencer got to work sharpening ice tools and crampons, while the rest of us packed our bags for the morning.

The next morning, after a not so restful night's sleep on the floor, I woke up to my 7am alarm. The plan was to meet up with the other climbers at the Abundance bakery and get some beta on what routes were "in" at the moment. All of us were new to the area, so we were really relying on the locals to help us out in that regard. We pulled up to the bakery just before 8 and it was already packed. From the Arc'teryx jackets and mountaineering boots, I could tell we'd arrived at the right place. 

The festival was giving out free equipment to use for the weekend, so I got myself a pair of shiny new ice tools and crampons. After breakfast we got in our cars headed to Duffy road to search for some ice.  We drove for a while down the highway, occasionally spotting ice. The 1000ft WI4+ ice flow of Synchronicity was clearly visible from the road. Finally Spencer spotted a nice looking flow across the valley. We pulled off the road, got our gear on, and began marching through the crisp old snow towards the ice. 

I crossed a bridge, trying my best to avoid the gaps in the boards hidden under the snow. Quickly we abandoned the road and found a path through the tangled woods, bushwhacking straight uphill to the ice flow. 

Then suddenly a huge wall of ice appeared out of the trees. The left side was made up of layers of overhung chandeliers. The center line was a steep, fragile WI5 pitch. Spencer and Alex were the only ones comfortable leading, so I belayed Spencer up a cool dihedral feature while Alex soloed a face to our right. They both set top ropes about 30' up, where there was a sloped ledge. After lowering Spencer, I grabbed my tools and tied in. I was super psyched to sink my ice tools into real ice for the first time. Initially it felt pretty insecure, it felt strange to be attached to the ice by just tiny points of metal. But the fun thing about being bad at something is that you can get better really quickly. I took a few laps on the dihedral and could feel myself getting better every lap. 

At one point Alex's crampon fell apart as he was soloing which you can see in the photo above. Alex stayed super calm though and finished the next few moves one footed and then clipped into his tools. Then he was finally able to place a screw and clip into it. We climbed for a few hours but eventually the ice began to deteriorate, so we left around 2:00.

After we got back we had a few hours to kill. That night there was gonna be some slideshow presentations and a meet n greet at the local brewery. That wasn't until 6:00 though. Preston and Spencer went to Tim Hortons to do homework and Alex took a nap. I decided to go for a walk. I ended up accidentally walking through and around the entire town of Lillooet, which was about 6 miles. The mountains were really pretty and I found some cool rocks by the river. I also saw a Townsend's Solitaire which is also pretty cool.

We got to the brewery a bit early but there were already a decent number of people, so we grabbed the few open seats remaining which was a good idea. A lot of people showed up. The slideshows were presented by Brandon Pullan and Ian Welsted and they were both amazing. Brandon is the editor of Gripped and has climbed with some of the best climbers in the world. Ian is one of only two Canadians to win the Piolet D'Or. Both are really strong climbers and great story tellers. Plus Brandon bought me a beer, so that made me like him a bit more. We left around 9:30 so we could get some rest for the next day of climbing.

The next morning we woke up early and, after a quick breakfast at the bakery, headed out a climb called The Tube WI3+. It was slightly closer than where we had been climbing yesterday, and when we pulled up we could see there was a team with a top rope already setup. It was a quick steep hike through the woods to the base of the route. We had to put our crampons on for the last section up to the base of the route. 

The team that was already here wanted to top rope the right side so after they finished up and moved their top rope over, Spencer started up the pitch on lead. He made it almost all the way to the top, where he lowered off a screw after getting kinda gripped with some dull screws. Alex finished the pitch. While Spencer was leading with Alex belaying, Me and the rest of the group soloed a WI2 pitch below the route, mostly really easy ice with two bulges. This was my first time using my personal crampons with horizontal front points in ice. They felt surprisingly solid, the only noticeable difference was that they took much more force to stick in the ice.

When it was my turn, I trailed a rope so the group headed back to Bellingham could swap our rope with the brothers from Seattle's rope. We wanted to head out quickly to start the long drive back. The climb was fun, it was very picked out so there were tons of hooks. I felt much more flowy than the day before and was confident trusting my tools and not over-gripping quite as much.

As soon as I was down we hiked back to the car. We stripped off our outer layers, had some food, and got settled in for the long drive home.