LOWA Awards $7000 to Ouray Speed Climbing Competition Winners

LOWA Boots awarded $7000 in prize money yesterday to winners of the 2013 Hari Berger Ice Climbing Competition at the Ouray Ice Festival in Ouray, Colorado. Four-time World Ice Climbing Champion and LOWA athlete, Ines Papert, walked away with the women’s top prize of $2000, which she donated back to the Festival, after competing to the sound of cheering crowds and flashing cameras below. Jeff Mercier took the men’s honors. Second place winners Dawn Glanc and Whit Magro left the podium with $1000 each while $500 went to third place finishers, Marianne Van Der Steen and Simon Duveryney.

LOWA sponsored the Hari Berger Speed Climbing Competition to honor the legendary climber who won three Ice Climbing World Championships while wearing LOWA boots. Hari was an all around champion competition ice climber before he lost his life in 2006 in an accident while climbing in Austria…but his legacy lives on. LOWA’s sponsorship of the event doubled the Festival’s cash prize opportunities.

The Competition was the grand finale of the annual event which saw a continual stream of festival participants in and out of the LOWA demo tent. They were able to take advantage of Ines sharing climbing tips and the LOWA team putting out a stream of their world-class German climbing and mountaineering boots including the Weisshorn GTX, Mountain Expert GTX and Ice Comp IP GTX models.

LOWA Boots LLC, with headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, is a partnership with LOWA Sportschuhe Gmbh founded in 1923 and based in Jetzendorf, Germany. The U.S. company, launched in 1996, sells, markets, and distributes a complete line of four season outdoor footwear for walking, hiking, backpacking, and mountaineering as well as everyday use. In addition, LOWA offers collections of specialized footwear for field sports and professional task force use.

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