Ice Climbing

After the crevasse rescue class a couple weeks earlier, I was really looking forward to the Santiam Alpine Club's ice climbing program  in the middle of September. We were again on Elliot Glacier and it was incredible to see the changes that had occurred in the snow and ice since I had been on the glacier a month before. The snowfield that we had camped on during the crevasse rescue program was now a rocky and crevassed mess.



We spent the day Saturday and Sunday on the glacier, learning and practicing techniques for climbing vertical ice walls. On Saturday, we found some small, 10-20 foot ice walls that we could walk right up to and practice climbing. I became addicted to ice climbing very quickly. We belayed each other up the ice pitches, then rappelled down them, to squeeze in as much climbing as possible. We also practiced placing ice screws for anchors, using the skills we had learned during the crevasse rescue program. Here's one of the other climbers on one of the ice ledges (I haven't gotten the pictures of me from other people, yet).


Saturday evening, we returned to the campground a couple miles below the glacier (we didn't camp up on the glacier this time) so that we could cook a big group meal. One of the couples that were in the class cooks professionally, so they prepared us an amazing fajita burrito dinner, one of the best I've ever had and the perfect meal after a long day of climbing.

We spent Sunday rappelling and lowering each other 30 feet down into a crevasse and climbing back out of it. Unfortunately, because we had gotten a late start Sunday morning, we only got to spend a few hours on the glacier. I did get some video of me rappelling into and climbing out of a crevasse. I'll post it as soon as I get a chance to edit it.

Ice climbing was a ton of fun and it's definitely something I plan on doing in the future. There's a waterfall across form the cabin in Colorado that I've had my eye on for quite a while now...