Boulder climber Elias wins big at Teva Games
An extreme ice climber climbs mixed rock and frozen waterfall formations. The sport is part of this weekend's games. Special to the Vail Daily
By Jason Blevins, The Denver Post
VAIL — As the snow hammered, Boulder's Sam Elias slammed his ice tool through the crumbling foam discs into the hardwood of the climbing wall. After 11 laps up the 50-foot wall, twisting and pulling, the 29-year-old cranked his way to mixed climbing victory at the first-ever Winter Teva Mountain Games.
On his 10th lap in the first-one-to-the-top, head-to-head competition, he scaled the overhanging structure in 2 minutes, 22 seconds, the fastest time of the day.
"I don't know, rhythm, muscle memory, breathing, friends I was competing against motivating me," he said, explaining the late surge in a long day of climbing. "It was a combination of things, I think. Endurance."
Learn more about the Winter Teva Mountain Games and see a link to the weekend's parties.
The 20 climbers who competed in the mixed climbing competition Friday at the base of Vail's Gold Peak at first worked in warm sunshine. The dense foam discs meant to simulate ice quickly deteriorated after hundreds of thwacks with razor-sharp ice tools, giving a sort of new interpretation of "mixed climbing," which typically involves ice and rock. By the late Friday finals, the discs were weathered wisps of crumbling foam.
The men hammered their tools deep into the wood backing as they climbed identical routes in the dual competition. After climbing one side, the climbers had three minutes to rest their arms and then they switched routes. The second climbs seemed to require more of a test of endurance than ice-climbing skills, with climbers hanging and shaking their arms.
The finals saw Frisco's Stanislav Vrba in neck-and-neck competition with Elias. The good friends — who fell early at last month's climbing competition in Ouray — were pushing each other to climb faster and reach the top first.
"Really, if Stanley won, I would be just as happy as I am now," said Elias, who pocketed $2,000 with the win.
The women competed with the men in the competition, but none made the finals. A women's final between Boulder's Emily Harrington and Dawn Glanc saw both peel off the wall in the first climb, leaving the second climb with high drama. Harrington, who won last month's ice festival competition in Ouray, slipped early, delivering Glanc, Ouray's 2011 winner, the gold medal.
Saturday's competitions at the Winter Teva Games include a grueling ski mountaineering race across Vail Mountain, on-snow dual slalom mountain biking and a nighttime big-air contest with both mountain bikers and telemark skiers.
Watch a video from the mixed climbing competition.
MIXED CLIMBING
Somewhere between climbing, ice climbing and high-alpine mountaineering is mixed climbing. Known as dry tooling, climbers in full ice-climbing regalia ascend rock using ice tools. That's right: Crampon-wearing, pickax-wielding folks choose to hang, shimmy and climb icy, rocky expanses. Though the technique has been around for decades - how else would ice climbers get to ice lines high above the ground, or get from ice patch to ice patch on multi-pitch ascents broken up by rock? - but the modern sport version is relatively new.
“Modern mixed climbing started in Vail, in the Fang amphitheater during the mid-'90s,” said Josh Wharton, Patagonia ambassador and world climber.
Read more about mixed climbing in Wren Wertin's story at the Vail Daily website.
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