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Today was certainly easier than yesterday, but that’s only because tomorrow will be harder than the previous two combined! After waking up at what CJ considers a leisurely hour(7 AM), we had a skills seminar on how to walk up and down steep slopes. This is a skill we’ll be needing on the upper mountain & we were shown the duck step & the cross step. For really steep slopes you can actually cross your legs as you step while you point downhill. It definitely felt weird to be pointed downhill, but the steeper the slope, the more downhill you point.  The crampon spikes dig into the snow & keep you from slipping.

Breakfast was delicious pancakes, again courtesy of Mike. I suspect Mike got fed up of having crappy food on mountains, which might be why he’s such a good chef.  Following breakfast, we practiced roping up & moving as a rope team as well as ice axe self arrest, and tying into fixed lines. We were also shown how to cross ladders suspended over crevasses. I’d seen this on the winter seminar, but it was good to get  a refresher.

For the self arrest training, we slid down the slope to build up some speed before arresting from various positions. I think it was more useful than the static position arrests, but our guides said that people were getting too many injuries from that practice session so they’ve toned it down a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After packing up our gear, we roped up and traveled across the Cowlitz Glacier to Cathedral Gap. We needed to be roped together since glaciers have crevasses – giant gaping chasms that you can fall into. If you’re not roped up, that’d be the end for you but if you are, your rope team can go into arrest position to stop your fall with their ice axes & then rig up a pulley system with anchors & ropes to haul you out.

We reached Cathedral Gap about an hour later where we quickly made our way up this rocky area known for its high rockfall danger. The idea is to minimize the danger by minimizing exposure time. Our camp on the Ingraham Glacier was only 20 minutes past the top of the Gap and upon arriving, we got our gear into the tents & took a nap while we waited for food to be ready. The sun had just broken so the weather was quite pleasant, despite being on snow. After eating a delicious pasta dinner(at 3 PM), we went back to our tents to get some sleep. At least we tried to – getting good sleep in tents at high altitude is never easy, let alone in the middle of the day before a summit attempt.

Continue to Day 3 – Summit Attempt & The Disappointment Cleaver