Et was the winter of 2005 in Ouray, a town in the southwest of the American state of Colorado, in the middle of the San Juan Mountains. Ouray hosts the Ice Festival every year, a gathering of the best athletes in ice climbing – a fascinating sport, technically, tactically and physically extremely demanding, with routes that are constantly changing and can disappear just after a climb. “There I probably got the greatest recognition of my whole life,” says Ines Papert. “And that for something that I didn’t find as difficult as a first ascent, where you’re on the road for days, where you suffer and fight and freeze and at some point you’re at the top.”
In Ouray in 2005, only three climbers made it to the top of the route in an icy gorge. Two men and one woman. The fastest of the three was Ines Papert. That meant: Papert was the overall winner. In front of all men. The success made international waves; even the New York Times reported on it. In her book “In Fels und Eis”, Papert tells how she murmured something about “Going well” and “You were lucky” in front of thousands of spectators at the award ceremony, and Canadian ice climbing legend Will Gadd, one of the defeated, then took the microphone and said: “Ines, shut up, you kicked our butts!” – “Stop it, you kicked us in the butt!” Today Ines Papert says: “What impressed me the most was the coolness with which the male competitors have dealt with it.”
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