The Icefight 2011, Rabenstein.

This past weekend was the Icefight in Rabentein, Italy (really part of Austria since everyone there speaks German, and is located on the border of Italy and Austria). It s a very small village tucked away high in the Southern Tyrol Region and is home to one of the best organized competitions I have ever been to in any capacity.

The people there are amazing. Markus was telling me that the community built the climbing structure and hosts the event purely on sponsored dollars and from volunteer work. Loads of local show up to witness the best competition ice climbers in the world compete on a self standing, well engineered tower of hard mixed climbing and man-made ice.


As a competitor, you get to spend a lot of time in the isolation zone. The more successful you are, the more time you get to spend in isolation. Another way to get to spend time in isolation is during the qualification rounds and to be the unlucky person who draws to go last out of all the competitors, that would be me this time.

Really, its best to only have a little time in isolation. It can be cold and, given enough time, one can psychologically undo oneself. It's difficult to know exactly when to warm up and when to get physically and mentally ready to go. Competition is so different than real world ice climbing in many ways since there are so many more factors and pressures that come into play. Its easy to start casting doubts and let the phantoms of failure creep into your mind. Finding a good focus is a skill. The more pressures I seem to put on myself, the worse things get. It seems like the less care about failing in a competition, the better I perform. It's hard not to care.

Learning from failures is an important part of competition climbing.

Evgeny Kryvosheytsev told me over dinner that he has been in more than 700 competitions. That's nearly a competition every day for two solid years if they were done back to back ! Markus Bendler said on the drive home that on his second World Cup Ice event his first move was to step out of bounds over a red line and be disqualified. Competitions are tough, there's just no two ways around it. Learn from mistakes or become part of the collateral damage, that's the choice. I guess that's one of the things that makes climbing so appealing, that there's always something to learn or some way to make yourself better.

Like the rest of this trip to Europe, I am fortunate enough to be able to go with friends to new climbing areas. Markus took me to some of his crags near his home in Austria. It was great to climb at yet more cool places. I'd love to spend more time climbing with Markus, but he's going to Romania and I'm going home to the States.

I've had my fill of the World Cup tour for this year and after the shenanigans in Saas-Fee, I'm not psyched about investing more time and money to go to the next UIAA World Cup competition until some issues area addressed. Maybe they will learn from watching places like Rabenstein. I like learning from the competition climbing about my abilities and my weaknesses. Rabenstien always allows me to make the mistakes so that I can become a better climber. Can't wait for next year !