{"id":36631,"date":"2022-12-24T19:16:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-25T02:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ouray-ice-park-opens-for-the-season\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:32:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:32:42","slug":"ouray-ice-park-opens-for-the-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ouray-ice-park-opens-for-the-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Ouray ice park opens for the season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A climber high up a route coming out of the Uncompahgre River Gorge at the Ouray Ice Park in Ouray on Saturday Jan. 22, 2022. The routes at the park are created by \u201cice farmers\u201d who use overflow water from the city to spray through more than 200 hoses in freezing temperature to create walls of ice that attract climbers in growing numbers to the area in winter. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Ouray Ice Park opened Saturday, a week later than originally anticipated but still before Christmas.<\/p>\n

Ice farmers have been hard at work since November, according to the park\u2019s Facebook page, spraying water down the cliffs of the Uncompahgre River gorge to create the streams of frozen water that attract ice climbers from all over the world.<\/p>\n

The park has over 125 ice climbing routes and is renown as a training ground for experienced and new ice climbers alike. This year, the park will host at least two major events, including the ALL IN Ice Fest<\/a> and the Ouray Ice Festival.<\/p>\n

The former, which will be held Jan. 6-8, 2023, is targeted toward serving traditionally marginalized communities in outdoor spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cALL IN\u2019s mission is to elevate and highlight people from marginalized communities \u2013 including Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBTQIA2S+ communities, and adaptive climbers,\u201d the description reads.<\/p>\n

The annual Ouray Ice Festival<\/a> will be held Jan. 19-22 in the park. The event features clinics, gear demos and competitions.<\/p>\n

The ice park drew about 20,600 visitors during the 2021-22,<\/a> 95% of which were visitors to Ouray. The park has become the lifeblood of the small town\u2019s winter economy, as those visitors infused an estimated $17.3 million into Ouray\u2019s hotels, restaurants and guiding services.<\/p>\n

The park is free to visit, although frequent users are encouraged to become members of the nonprofit that runs it. Operating hours are Monday \u2013 Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the weekends. Members of the Ouray ice Park, Inc. may enter a half-hour earlier each day.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

of Ouray\u2019s winter economy ekes out an opening in time for Christmas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1488,1489,3363],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ice-climbing","tag-ouray","tag-ouray-ice-festival"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83408,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36631\/revisions\/83408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36631"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}