Winona’s gigantic ice walls attract climbers from across the country

Shelly Keller was nearly to the top of a 100-foot ice wall on Jan. 17 when her stomach dropped, her head started spinning and her vision narrowed.

She was experiencing “the screaming barfies” — a painful sensation brought on by blood rushing back to cold, oftentimes numb, hands. The 51-year-old climber from the Chicago area almost threw up.

“I thought I was going to pass out and die. It was the worst I have ever felt,” she said between climbs. “I thought I’m so miserable I’m never doing this again, but now I’m all happy and chipper and ready to do it again.”

With more than 100 climbing routes, the Winona Ice Park in southeast Minnesota attracts around 100 people on frigid days. Many, like Keller, drive hours to spend the weekend in Winona, a town of about 25,000.

More are scheduled to visit during this weekend’s third annual Winona Ice Fest, said Eric Barnard, the Winona State University professor who started the festival. All 450 climbing clinic tickets have been sold for the event, which runs through Saturday, Jan. 31.

That makes it one of the largest climbing festivals in the nation, Barnard said. In a 2024 article, Climbing Magazine pegged the Winona Ice Park as the country’s third-largest ice park. Minnesota is also home to Duluth’s Sandstone Ice Park and Quarry Park, which the Minnesota Climbers Association named as an official ice park in 2020.

Keller attended the Ice Fest last year with friend Anna Benson as part of the Chicago Mountaineering Club. She said she enjoys the camaraderie that comes with ice climbing, a sport that tests different muscles compared with indoor climbing.

“Rock climbing you’re pretty much stuck to your season,” Benson said. “Getting out ice climbing makes winter stink a little less. Plus, I love getting outdoors.”

A visitor wearing winter cleats can reach the ice park from the parking area below in about 15 minutes.

The park is on a bluff towering about 500 feet over Lake Winona and adjacent to the town’s Sugar Loaf Bluff trail. There, a network of hoses attached to a fire hydrant about a mile away feed water to dozens of sprinkler heads hanging over the wall. When the weather is cold enough, in the teens, the water is turned on overnight to create sheets of ice on the wall, Barnard said.

For beginners, the park features shorter routes at about 20 to 30 feet high on mellow gullies. Other routes require maneuvering through both rock and ice, and have staggeringly steep vertical climbs around large columns of ice.

Barnard estimated about a million gallons of water is used every year — all paid for by the Minnesota Climbers Association, he said.

Barnard started the Winona Ice Fest in the hopes that it would inspire more people to try ice climbing and to explore the town. The inaugural event attracted just a couple hundred attendees, he said. This year, the climbing clinics are full.

Climbers registered in a clinic are outfitted with all needed gear, Barnard said. Anyone who still wants to climb but has not signed up for a clinic must bring their own equipment or rent it from Winona State.

Besides ice climbing, the festival features concerts, yoga, films, saunas and after-parties at Two Fathoms Brewing. On Thursday, organizers illuminated the cascade of ice with an array of colors, allowing people to climb as they listened to music from a DJ playing at the top of the bluff.