For the last two years I have run an ice climbing festival in the Mount Washington Valley. It is a bit on an anomaly in my work as a nonprofit consultant. The pay is minimal and pulling off an event of this scale so it feels seamless to participants takes a ton of work.
This year is the 19th Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest, the first weekend in February hundreds of men and women will make the pilgrimage to The Mount Washington Valley to experience the magic of the place I call home. Some of these pilgrims come to learn to climb ice, some to summit Mount Washington, others, to spend a day mixed climbing with local legends like Mark Synnott and Kevin Mahoney or to test their skill on classic lines like Dracula, Drop Line and Great Madness.
In the background, the Sirens of Ice Fest (the crew of lovely ladies who work on this event) will watch six months of work come together, sleeping a few hours here and there, living on Frontside Grind coffee and the generous Flatbread pizzas our friends drop off at IME.
We won’t climb a single pitch of ice the entire weekend and we will be happy for it. Instead we will make sure waivers are signed, clients get to demo the gear they are excited about, guides are well fed and caffeinated, slideshows run smoothly and the keg is tapped and food is on the table when the gang returns from a day our playing.
When clients and others just out for the day on their own walk through the door of IME smiling from ear to ear, laughing with friends, and recanting epic moments from their day we know our job is done. In that moment it doesn’t matter if they climbed Willy’s Slide, Standard Route or tested their skill on Unemployment Line and it doesn’t matter that we haven’t swung a tool all weekend - their send is ours too.
We exchange high fives, share tips about gear, and provide encouragement to do it all again tomorrow.
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