L’Argentière La Bessée (France), Ice Climbing Event 2004

The 14th edition of the Ice Climbing Event of L’Argentiere La Bessée has taken place this January, from Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11. This meeting of the ice-climbing world has become by now an institution in the international mountaineering circles. Year after year, edition after edition, the meeting has become more and more important and today it is a true reference point of the scene and an appointment nobody of the passionate insiders would want to renounce to.
One more time the small village of the French Hautes Alpes, particularly attentive to all ways, bound to the mountain world, of enhancing the value of the environment, has realized the “wonder” of elevating the Briançonnais region to world fame.
It is certainly an important project, that involves the entire region with a series of sportive-cultural events, with connections to the mountain world and that propose ways of alternative tourism in the mountains. For about fifteen years the Briançonnais region has been the center of a series of events designed to promote climbing in all its aspects, from competitions to bouldering meetings, to the Ice Climbing Event. This has been made possible by the means offered by the local administration and by the remarkably experienced existing organization.
It is a reality that in the five meeting days about 700 ice climbers have gathered at the base of the icefalls of the Fournel and Freissinieres Valleys. A lot of passionate spectators arrived to participate to the event and visit the booths of the specialized exhibiting companies (17 of them), that showed the last novelties in the Icexpo Hall, just built for this purpose. During five full days ice climbers, coming from 24 countries, among which Russia, USA, Japan, Swede, Croatia, Slovakia, Ireland and Greece, have crowded the mountains of the region swinging ice-axes like never before.
Five days of meetings and debates, including the leading theme of this fourteen edition, safety and pedagogic in ice climbing. At this regard there have been several events organized by the attending companies (Ice Tech) that have offered a series of informative clinics about the above-mentioned topics, meetings where the specialists of the sector transmitted their experience for free to the people interested in trials on the field. It was also possible to test specialized materials like mountain boots, crampons, ice axes, ice-screws and clothing.
The organization had also made a remarkable effort to build, outside the Icexpo, a functional artificial ice-climbing wall, for exhibitions and dry-tooling competitions for amateurs, during the whole duration of the event. A lot of spectators could also enjoy some movies coming from the Banff Festival (Canada), that were shown every evening in the Town Hall of the Municipality.
A nice experience, rich in interesting aspects and good proposals. One of those events that ideally gather together passionate organizers and specialized companies, and all of them were satisfied with the exchange of the experiences and the climate of the meeting. It was surely a good example of ice-contest, from the organizational and logistic points of view. Probably the ephemeral world of ice-climbing moves in these directions, where the old game of vertical ice is proposed through these new forms of communication that make the approach and the practice of the activity simpler and more immediate.
Oscar Durbiano