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The methodic thud of steel on ice rings through the snow-draped walls of Keystone Canyon, a serpentine gash just east of Valdez, Alaska. Most winter days, the tiny coastal town of 3,852 residents feels almost empty. But on one weekend every February, it swells with visitors from all over the world who have come to experience Valdez’s best-kept secret: hundreds of feet of frozen waterfalls that hang like silver curtains along the canyon walls. By Saturday afternoon, the canyon is alive with the percussive rhythm of ice axes and crampons kicking into vertical sheets of hard, blue ice. And come nightfall, those same climbers flood the bar at the Fat Mermaid to swap adventure stories before heading out and doing it all over again.
The Valdez Ice Fest isn’t your average small-town festival. For 42 years, Alaska’s hardiest residents have gathered around the frozen waterfalls of Valdez—some of them up to 900 feet tall—to hone their skills, test their mettle and celebrate the state’s tight-knit ice climbing community. Today, it’s one of the longest-running winter festivals in the state. It’s also quickly gaining a reputation as one of the best venues for learning to ice climb in the United States, and as a driving force growing the sport across the nation.
America’s oldest ice fest
The idea of an ice climbing festival may sound a little out there, but Valdez doesn’t have a monopoly on the concept. The town of Munising, Michigan, has been holding the Michigan Ice Fest since 1990, and Colorado’s Ouray Ice Festival has been teaching clinics and hosting first-timers for nearly 30 years. But in contrast to the Valdez event, these celebrations tend to be larger and, at times, more chaotic, says Kevin Lindlau, an ice climbing athlete and competitor who regularly teaches clinics at all three. A few such events, like the Ouray Ice Festival, regularly draw thousands of people.
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“But Valdez is so out there, it has this remote feeling to it. And the event caps out at around a few hundred people, so you really get to know everyone,” Lindlau says. The other unique thing about the Valdez fest is that most of the attendees are local. People fly in from Canada, Mexico, the Lower 48, and beyond, but the festival is primarily by locals, for locals.
“It’s actually growing the ice climbing scene in Alaska itself,” Lindlau says. “It’s having a real impact on the community.”
That tight-knit, community feel is what keeps people coming back. When Kory Maillet first moved to Valdez in 2015, he didn’t know how to ice climb, but he was looking for ways to get involved. So, he signed up to volunteer at the Ice Fest.
“The thing that struck me most was the inclusiveness of it all,” Maillet says. “Regardless of what your skill level was, if you were a fellow person who had shown up to suffer through the cold and the wet to make your way up a frozen waterfall, you were welcome.”
Maillet has been involved in the Ice Fest nearly every year since. He’s now a board member for the Valdez Mountaineering Organization, a new local NGO that recently took over operations. Over its 42 years of history, the Valdez Ice Fest has changed hands several times as its nonprofit keepers have come and gone. But in all that time, it’s stayed true to its roots.
Humble beginnings
The Valdez Ice Fest was first conceived of in 1983 as a barely formal gathering of like-minded adventurers. Two locals—married couple Andy Embick and Kathy Todd—hosted climbers in their home, offering floor space for sleeping bags and a now-legendary spaghetti feed. The fest’s original invitations stated that the price of attendance was $10, most of which would go toward purchasing spaghetti. They also warned that visitors were welcome to stay the night, but that they should expect to be put to work in the kitchen stirring marinara.
Embick and Todd’s goal was simply to get folks together to climb as much as possible in a single weekend. Around 30 people showed up that first year. Since then, the event has grown to around 300 participants, and visitors now tend to stay in hotels. But the tradition of hospitality remains.
“It’s such a loving community,” Lindlau says. “A lot of companies and businesses open up just for us during the Ice Fest, and people welcome us into their homes. They really want to share what they have up here.”
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The festival is still expanding, both in size and in mission. Today, it’s leaning more into its educational focus. Climbing guides, sponsored athletes (like Lindlau) and local volunteers (like Maillet) teach clinics on technique fundamentals, mountain safety and climbing efficiency. It’s paying off. Not only are more people ice climbing, but more climbers are also reaching higher levels of the sport.
“Alaska has a deep, rich history of what we would call ‘silent crushers,’” Lindlau says, referring to climbers who have a very high skill level but don’t like to broadcast it. “Because of that tradition, though, people weren’t reaching out from a mentorship standpoint to teach others for many years, so the community seemed stagnant. But now that more and more people are getting into ice climbing here, folks are coming out of the woodwork to learn, and then to get out and push the envelope.”
While no organization regularly tracks the number of ice climbers in Alaska, Lindlau says it seems to mimic the nationwide trend: slow but steady growth. According to the Outdoor Industry Association’s 2024 “Outdoor Participation Trends Report,” in the United States, the number of people who engage in traditional climbing disciplines (including ice and mixed climbing) is around 2.6 million—about 24 percent more than when the association first started tracking this data in 2007. Other reports suggest that around 14 percent of outdoor climbers climb ice, which would put total U.S. participation at more than 450,000 people each year. That approaches figures for other niche sports, like wake surfing.
Peter O’Neil, the executive director of the Ouray Ice Park, also notes that the number of park visitors has been increasing over the last few years. During the 2022-2023 winter season, for example, the Ouray Ice Park hosted nearly 24,000 climbers—an all-time high.
On the schedule for this year’s Valdez Ice Fest, happening this weekend, are more than a dozen clinics, morning yoga, a dance party, brewery hangouts and presentations from local climbers on recent expeditions. Ice climbing athletes will fly in to provide instruction, and local guides will set up ropes for new folks to practice their skills. And, as an ode to the spaghetti dinners of lore, the Valdez Mountaineering Organization will hold a community cookout on Saturday night.
“It’s going to be fun,” Maillet says. “I’ve been instructing for the Ice Fest for a few years now, and the beginner classes are always my favorite. I love meeting new climbers. The moment when you see things click for people and you can see their excitement—that’s the best part.”
The ice climbing mother lode
Fortunately, Valdez has more than enough ice to support the increase in interest. In fact, its topography and conditions create something of a perfect storm for stable, climbable ice.
“We’re a coastal city, but we’re right on the edge of the Tongass rainforest. That means we have a lot of moisture,” says Maillet. Water vapor rises up off the ocean and comes inland. The Chugach Mountains—the rugged local range that cuts off Valdez from the rest of the world—trap that moisture, creating a rain shadow. The clouds stack up over Valdez, dropping around 62 inches of rainfall and 28 feet of snow each year. The result: dozens of towering waterfalls in a very small area.
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Valdez’s coastal position also keeps temperatures fairly temperate—hovering around the 20s or 30s during the day in the winter—meaning that it’s cold enough for the waterfalls to freeze, but not cold enough to render the ice hard and brittle. The result is what ice climbers refer to as “plastic ice” or “hero ice.” It’s soft enough to take an ice-ax pick with a single swing, allowing swift, smooth climbing without an excess of kicking or hacking. In a nutshell, it’s the kind of ice alpinists spend their whole lives dreaming of.
Better yet, the ice is accessible within just a five- to ten-minute walk from the road, and it isn’t farmed. In designated ice parks like in Ouray and Lake City, Colorado, professional “ice farmers” run hoses and shower heads atop canyons and cliffs, expanding existing ice flows and sculpting new ones. The practice is effective for creating highly concentrated ice flows, but farmed ice results in strange globules and chandelier-like coatings of icicles that shatter easily. It can be tough to climb and a little less aesthetically appealing. In Valdez, however, the ice is all-natural, free-range and wild. Shorter cliffs still sport 60-foot ice flows suitable for beginners, while experts can head out for an all-day adventure on the 900-foot flows.
“We also have access to a few glaciers here,” Maillet says. “There’s one—the Valdez Glacier—right at the end of my road. There are all these big icebergs, and it’s like a bouldering field for ice climbing.” Some new routes and areas are still being established.
The nearly endless climbing potential is one of the reasons Marcus Garcia—a guide, coach and climbing athlete based in Durango, Colorado—has been coming back to the Ice Fest year after year for nearly a decade. Garcia is something of a legend among climbers in the American West. When he was younger, he established bold first ascents of difficult routes in Yosemite Valley and beyond. In 2015, he launched the first ice climbing youth competition team in the country. A few of his students went on to win gold and silver medals in global competitions.
In 2015, the Valdez Adventure Alliance, a nonprofit with a mission to promote equitable access to outdoor recreation, invited Garcia to Alaska to help it develop its own youth programs. That was his first time in Valdez.
“I loved it,” Garcia says. “The people here are amazing. They’re willing to get out and climb, even in inclement weather. It’s a classic Alaskan community—tough, a little scrappy and 100 percent supportive of each other.”
A few years ago, Garcia and Lindlau hitched a ride on a friend’s snowmobile and sledded out to nearby Valdez Glacier Lake. In the summer, the lake bobs with icebergs. In the winter, the surface ices over, trapping the bergs like shark fins frozen in place. Some tilt, forming overhanging ice routes that jut over the glassy lake. Others curl over into glittering tunnels and caves. Lindlau and Garcia were able to establish a few new, never-before-climbed routes.
The ice climbing potential seems to extend in every direction, including west of Valdez, out into the water. Recently, Garcia and a friend snagged a boat ride out into the bay. The captain had seen a frozen cliff and thought Garcia should try to climb it.
“The route hadn’t been done before because you have to time the tides just right,” Garcia says. “The captain dropped us off at high tide so we could reach the shoreline. But then he gave us a bucket with a sleeping bag and rations for the night in case he couldn’t come back for us.” The oceans around Valdez, the captain told them, could be temperamental. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that; Garcia and his climbing partner were able to ascend the route—a several-hundred-foot ribbon of ice—and get down again by the next tide, and the waves stayed placid enough to permit the captain another passage.
“It was a real adventure,” Garcia says, laughing.
Celebrating resilience
The Ice Fest is a true community celebration, complete with beer drinking, bonfires and dancing. But it’s not just a party, says Faith Harris, executive director of Discover Valdez. It’s also a critical economic driver during the slow winter season and a way for the town to celebrate its resilience. Over the last 60 years, Valdez has suffered a devastating earthquake, major avalanches and the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill. Every time, the community bands together and pulls itself back from the brink.
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After the spill, for example, more than 11,000 local Alaskans poured into Valdez to support the cleanup effort. Many of them were volunteers. While the oil didn’t make its way into the inner bay that houses Valdez proper, the fisheries and ecosystems across the region suffered serious damage. And over 35 years later, some oil still remains, Harris says.
“There are certain elements that have not been healed yet,” she says. “The herring, which are a vital element to the Alaskan Native people, are still recovering.” That said, the Alyeska Pipeline, which has its terminus in Valdez, has brought so many jobs and so much income that most people regard it positively.
“It’s a complicated relationship,” says Harris. She says she’s grateful for the pipeline and what it has done for Valdez. But she’s also grateful for events like the Valdez Ice Fest and other outdoor recreation events that expand public perception of what Valdez can be.
Celebrations like the Ice Fest demonstrate just how far the region has come in restoring its natural beauty, Harris says. In just a few decades, the town has changed its global reputation from that of a disaster site to one of an outdoor recreation epicenter. It’s a well-deserved reputation, too, she says.
“We call Valdez Alaskans’ favorite adventure,” Harris says. “People come from the Lower 48 to Alaska for excitement and adventure, but the people of Alaska come to Valdez for that. It’s sort of a hidden treasure. There’s beautiful fishing, gorgeous glaciers and mountains that rival Denali in their beauty. It’s known as Little Switzerland, the Land of Waterfalls—it’s everything you’d want in Alaska in one place.”
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