My Foray into Snow, Ice and Mountaineering

As my day hiking adventures continue, I have discovered there is a whole new world out there awaiting me, snow and ice. I made my New Years resolution for 2010 to get more involved in snow and ice adventures other than skiing. I celebrated this by ringing in the new year by climbing San Jacinto Peak on snowshoes on New Years Day. Unable to stop at just that, I needed a new goal.

Over the winter I did plenty of local skiing and even got in a trip to Mammoth. While there I found a few opportunities to cruise the local golf courses in my snowshoes to get more familiar with them. I made a few trips into the local mountains of Orange County during our cold winter and found some snow up there but nothing that required anything special.

I had added new gear to my collection over the past year to prepare for what was ahead of me. I picked up mountaineering boots, crampons (spikes for your boots), snowshoes, mountaineering helmet and lastly, the icon of mountaineering, my ice axe. With all this gear comes plenty of learning. I did not want to be the guy who bought all this stuff only to die on his first trip out as he had no idea of how to use it. I needed some experience and some professional training.

A good friend of mine, Edd, who I met through the Orange County Hiking and Backpacking Club, was already a regular in the winter sports. Edd is an instructor for the Sierra Club’s Wilderness Travel Course and was willing to invite me to join him and some other mutual friends on a trip up the Mt. Baldy Bowl. After reading up on winter mountaineering skills and bringing my mountaineering boots, crampons, helmet and newly acquired ice axe we headed up for one of Edd’s famous “Brunch on Baldy” hikes which he tends to host year round. I learned a lot of the basics that day. The glissade down the Baldy Bowl was incredible (sliding on your rear using your ice axe as a brake) and I practiced self arrest, the act of stopping your fall through the proper use of your ice axe and body position. It was a great introduction but I realized I wanted….and needed more.

The beginning of May I attended my first professional instruction. I headed up to Mammoth to attend a course put on by Sierra Mountaineering International, or SMI, headed by two-time Everest summiter and worldwide mountaineering guide Kurt Wedberg. On day one, seven of us were joined by one of SMI’s experienced instructors for the Snow Travel course. This gave us instruction and lots of practice with using our ice axe in self arrest, ice axe travel across snow and ice covered slopes, roped travel with and without running belays and other general topics relating to travel in snow conditions. I chose to stay on for the second day which covered snow anchors and crevasse rescue techniques. When I asked how many other students would be staying for day two I heard nothing but silence. I was informed that it was just me and that Kurt himself would be teaching the class.

Day two was incredible. It is not every day that you get private instruction from a mountaineer as recognized as Kurt. We built different snow anchors all morning and set up crevasse rescue systems all afternoon. I learned a lot. I can comprehend plenty when I am interested in the topic and Kurt crammed in all the information I could hold. He was nice enough to take a few photos to help me remember but we were so busy with just the two of us that pictures were again not a priority.

You must be thinking by now, “Glenn must have something up his sleeve to put in all this training and effort”, and you would be correct. My plan is to summit Mt. Shasta, the northern most fourteener in California on my 40^th birthday. I have made such a transformation in my lifestyle over the past 3 years. If I am going to have my “over the hill” birthday then it had better be a hill with a 14 at the beginning of it!

Keep an eye out for my future report on a first timers trip up Mt. Shasta.