After two years of winter mountaineering, I decided to take a formal course in snow travel and glacier rescue from Sierra Mountaineering International in Bishop, CA. I wanted a comprehensive review of techniques from a professional mountain guide, to ensure I was doing things the safest, most correct way.
Until now, I had learned my winter mountaineering skills, such as they were, from friends on this board and from reading Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills. It was valuable to take a more formal approach to training, and have someone assess my performance.
The first day was a very basic snow travel course, covering travel over snow and ice on a rope team, with crampons, how to use and ice axe, etc. What were most valuable to me, however, were the self-arrest drills, on which we spent most of the day. I never managed to master one of the self-arrest methods, and will need to work on it some more in the future.
Day two was about glacier rescue, principally setting up reliable anchors and putting together a C pulley and a Z pulley glacier rescue. Norma R from this board joined me for that one. Here we are with our bomber snow anchor:
Without constant training, practice and reinforcement, this course will have been a waste of time. I will make an effort to take the time to regularly practice the techniques I learned on Baldy and elsewhere.
Moar pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonov/se ... 89/detail/
Snow travel and glacier rescure with SMI, 9-10 Jan 2010
Nunc est bibendum
it was indeed a Bomber day! Great to meet you Siminov and to save the life of my weighted backpack.
Maybe we should hang out at the Baldy bowl and see if we can rescue anyone after the next snowstorm???
seriously, i highly recommend the classes.
Maybe we should hang out at the Baldy bowl and see if we can rescue anyone after the next snowstorm???
seriously, i highly recommend the classes.
