iceblog!

Snow Craft II

Once upon a time,

on a lovely day,

just past Scott Base,

we learned to fall

and to catch ourselves.

[Erebus on left.]

Okay, so the premise was this:
Those of us folks who may be spending time on steep and/or crevassed terrain, glaciers and such, attend a Snow Craft II course in which we learn techniques for travelling on the steep slopes (how to walk up and down a hill), self-arrest (how to catch oneself with an ice axe should one start a rapid and uncontrolled decent), and rope travel and crevasse rescue techniques. The most fun is falling down. No, it's catching yourself (you face the snow, dig your ice axe in, stick your butt out (the best of this best part), and kick kick kick your toes into the snow). No, it's falling (on a rope) into the crevasse-simulator (a 30-ft-deep trench dug into the snow). No, it's running around doing the airplane to keep warm. No, maybe it was walking along roped to 4 other people periodically calling "falling!" and running in a random direction to make the others brace against the 'fall', everyone face down in the snow. Okay, the very best part was yelling "Are you okay?" "___, are you okay?" "I'm okay!" "He/she's okay!" It's a little game I miss from Bloomington. (Jacqui? Tom? You out there?)

I get paid for this.

Posted by beth at November 7, 2003 06:20 PM | TrackBack