The day starts at 7:00 am with an equip­ment ori­en­ta­tion before dri­ving to Mount Bak­er’s Schreiber Mead­ow trail­head (a dif­fer­ent loca­tion may be used for this course). The hike is very stren­u­ous and can take 4 — 6 hours depend­ing upon the par­tic­u­lar approach and the fit­ness of the group. After estab­lish­ing camp, the remain­der of the day will focus on the skills nec­es­sary for the prop­er use of an ice axe, trav­el­ing in bal­ance, self-belay, and self-arrest. You also begin learn­ing about plac­ing var­i­ous types of snow pro­tec­tion for use in the con­struc­tion of snow anchors, as well as belay techniques.

We then focus on the skills required for safe and effi­cient glac­i­er trav­el includ­ing roped trav­el and self-res­cue (prus­sik­ing) tech­niques. This includes the means for each team mem­ber to cor­rect­ly tie into the rope includ­ing the prop­er spac­ing of climbers based on the num­ber of team mem­bers. After learn­ing the prop­er tech­niques for trav­el­ing as a rope team, we then make a short glacial ​“tour,” enabling us to prac­tice and com­pre­hend the day’s lessons. Dis­cus­sions late in the day will focus on nav­i­ga­tion with the use of a map and com­pass. Top­ics not com­plet­ed will be con­tin­ued on day 2.

Our main focus for the day is crevasse res­cue. Your group will get more prac­tice plac­ing effec­tive snow anchors and bol­lards and then learn to equal­ize them to cre­ate ​“bomber” anchors. You will put them to use as you learn the fun­da­men­tals of crevasse res­cue pul­ley sys­tems and then move on to more advanced pul­ley sys­tems. Your team will per­form a num­ber of team res­cues and a mul­ti­tude of real­is­tic crevasse fall sce­nar­ios will be addressed. We will con­clude the day with a dis­cus­sion of the moun­tain envi­ron­ment and meth­ods of eval­u­at­ing sub­jec­tive and objec­tive haz­ards before the hike out and return to Seattle.