In the middle of August was the Santiam Alpine Club's (the club I took climb school through this spring) annual Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue class. The class was on Elliot Glacier on the north side of Mt. Hood. We climbed up to the glacier early Saturday morning and spent the day practicing traveling in rope teams on ice, snow, and rock, learning and practicing crampon and ice axe technique and rope management. We also learned and practiced installing ice screws and setting up climbing and rappelling anchors in ice. We spent the night up on the glacier. I didn't use a tent and just slept in my sleeping bag inside a bivy sack. As opposed to the last freezing night I spent on a glacier, when climbing on Mt. Hood in the spring, I was plenty warm that night. With the exception of a little bit of rain and having to cover my head with my jacket, I slept pretty well. Here's our camp. My bivy is the dark green one on the far let of the picture.
We woke up with the sun on Sunday (I have more, incredible pictures of the sunrise on flickr). Here's the view from my bivy sack.
We spent Sunday practicing using pickets to set snow anchors and learning and practicing how to setup rope and pulley systems to pull fallen climbers out of a crevasse. I got to rappel 30 feet down into a crevasse and relax as my team members pulled me out. Here's one of my teammates rappelling into the crevasse.
I have a GoPro video of me rappelling into and being pulled out of the crevasse that I'll upload as soon as I have a chance to edit it.
Check out the picture of our camp above, then take a look at where Gabe's tent (the orange and gray one) was when we returned to camp Sunday afternoon. Luckily there was no damage.
I learned a lot that weekend and had a great time. I was looking even more forward to the Ice Climbing class a couple weeks later!
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