Never Stop Climbing

Armchair Climber
I like to think that I became a mountain climber the late afternoon, evening and night that I frantically read Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air”, in the winter of 1997. The big hard cover edition was sitting on a colleague’s desk, and since I was alone in the office on a Saturday, I figured he’d left it there for the weekend. I left a note saying that I’d borrowed it and took it home thinking I’d either have it read by Monday, or would have abandoned it after the first few pages.

I was up all night, my heart racing, turning pages violently, dreading the next paragraph, growing fond of some climbers anddespising others. By Sunday morning, I was exhausted. And I was hooked.

I kept on reading - the next logical choice was Anatoli Boukreev’s “The Climb”, his own account of the disaster in May 1996and his answer to Krakauer’s attacks.

Since then, I’ve built a library of over fifty or sixty books related to mountain climbing, mountain adventures, survival and tragedy in the mountains, coffee table books of the Himalayas and the Andes. I scour bookstores and the Internet for any new publication related to the sport.

Trekker
At some point since 1997, I decided to make the transition from armchair climber to actual climber. My great friend Dan is in part responsible for the actualization of this transition. As we worked together on a large CRM software implementation (he was the client, I was the vendor), we bonded over a beautiful picture of Mount Everest that Dan had taken himself from Tyangboche Monastery. A few months later, Dan put together a group of ten of his friends and acquaintances to go trekking in the Khumbu, the famous “Everest Base Camp Trek”. I had never gone on a trek, or multi-day hike, and I’d never even gone camping “for real”, in other words, without a car to hold all my supplies.

The Khumbu trek is not a “mountain climb”, it’s a stunningly beautiful hike that, over several days, takes trekkers through magnificent valleys flanked by breathtaking peaks. The goal of the trek is two-fold: the unbeatable view of Everest from Kala Patthar (5,545m, or 18,192 ft), and the visit of EBC. Seeing that we were there about two weeks before climbing expeditions were scheduled to arrive, we chose to skip EBC and focus our efforts on Kala Patthar. Efforts, for hiking? Yes, when the hike is taking place between 12,000ft and more than 18,000ft. The top of Kala Patthar, which is a barely noticeable hill in the Khumbu region, would be the highest peak in many countries of the world. Facing Everest from across the Khumbu Glacier, Kala Patthar is actually a gentle ridge on the side of Pumori. Reaching the (near) top of Kala Patthar and taking in the grand view of Everest, Nuptse, Lhotse, Ama Dablam in the distance, Pumori and countless other Himalayan peaks was more than enough to convince me that I had to progress to the next level, and find a way to set foot on a real mountain.

A year later - and sadly, in much worse shape physically - I decided on a whim to go to Africa and tackle Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I didn’t have summit fever - considering how out of shape I was, I didn’t expect to make the summit in either case (I didn’t reach Meru’s summit, but I did summit Kili). I went for the adventure, the travel experience, to see Africa for the first time, and because Dan and the new friends I made in Nepal highly recommended attempting Kilimanjaro.

Now - Kilimanjaro is high - the highest in Africa - but it is, much like Kala Patthar, a tough hike, requiring serious acclimatization over several days. The main difference, is that no one really goes to Nepal to climb Kala Patthar; everyone goes to see the Himalayas, and mainly, Mount Everest. Thousands of people flock to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro and reach its summit. Beyond understanding and dealing with the impacts of altitude, however, Kili does not require special training, or knowledge of mountaineering skills such as roping up, wearing crampons, self-arresting, or building snow anchors.

If you’re still with me, Reader, you’ll have noticed that I went from reading books, to trekking at altitude, to summiting one of the world’s highest and best-known non-technical mountains.

Student
My next steps would come a year later, when I decided to learn the skills that make a mountain climber, well, a true “mountaineer”. I signed up for a week-long mountaineering course with one of the USA’s best (arguably, the world’s) mountaineering schools and expedition organizers, Alpine Ascents International, of Seattle. AAI specializes in the “seven summits”, training and supporting climbers who have the ambition of reaching the highest summit on each continent. For us beginners, the target climb is of more modest altitude and difficulty, such as the one we tackled during our week-long schooling, beautiful Mount Baker.

I trained for four months before Mountaineering School, and lost about 30 pounds. The requirements were clear: participants must be in great shape physically, must have some experience with multi-day hikes and camping trips (which I had acquired starting with my trip to Nepal), and must be able to carry a 60-pound pack comfortably, over multiple days, going upwards. By the time I flew to Seattle, I was in the best shape I have ever been in. I was buff, I had become a runner (I could do 5 miles with no problem), and I was strong. Living in Toronto, I did not have many occasions to go train at altitude, but every weekend or two, I would strap on a 60-pound pack (hint: a two-liter plastic soda bottle filled with water weighs 2kg, or 4.4 lbs), and go climb local ski hills - multiple times. I got ambitious and started going up as fast as I could with the 60-pound pack. I have to admit that I managed to impress myself.

The rendez-vous at the Alpine Ascents office was on Sunday morning, 6am. Wearing my pack and carrying another duffel, I walked from the hotel to the office, anxious and doubting this was a good idea, but absolutely determined to see it through. I had to find out, once and for all, whether I even liked this mountain climbing business. Maybe I would discover that this was not for me at all - or maybe I would fall in love with it utterly and completely, never to look back.

I walked into the office, not knowing another soul, and was nervous to find out who my expedition mates would be. One thing that, frankly, made me nervous, was whether there would be other women on the course, or whether I would be surrounded by a group of highly-competitive Type A male adrenalin junkies. I knew I was in great shape for me, but wasn’t sure if that would be good enough to keep up with a bunch of “guys”. To my great relief, across from me sat another woman who looked about my age, and who was also there on her own. She looked relieved to see me too!

There was another woman, Winslow, who it turns out, was one of our two guides. The other guide, Todd, was her husband. The rest of the group were all guys, but three of them looked like occasional weekend warriors at best, and had signed up thinking this would be a “fun weekend”.

The Lessons
First lesson: packing gear. The Northwest is famous for its humid climate so first things first: line your pack with an industrial strength trash bag. Garbage compactor bags are recommended. Since I couldn’t find them (not sure why they’re so rare here), I used a heavy-duty plastic “leaf bag”. They’re huge and practically indestructible. To protect the sleeping bag from moisture, line the sleeping bag compression sack with a regular (smaller) garbage bag, put the sleeping bag in, and then compress the hell out of the whole thing to remove all the air. Practice that at home before having to do it in a tent in the cold
early in the morning: I almost sprained fingers the first time I did it…

I mentioned that I learned this in the Northwest because of the humid weather. It’s true that on most camping trips in Canada, you may not think of lining your pack that way. I had not done it in Nepal or Africa. However, since learning this at AAI (at 6am…), I’ve made it a habit to always protect my sleeping bag, and to line my pack. (On a recent 3-month trip to Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, it helped keep my gear dry on a few crucial occasions.)

I was well equipped - I had everything on the gear list (some well used, some brand new, mostly mine). Wanting to be well organized, I had a collection of “stuff sacks” of all sizes, allowing me to pack socks with socks, and gloves with gloves, separate from my tent and stove and food. The only problem was that the night before, I’d been up until about 3 in the morning packing and repacking, unable to fit all my stuff sacks inside my humongous expedition-size backpack. How was I going to be able to bring everything AAI told us to bring, if it couldn’t even fit in my pack?

The trick: bricks and mortar. Forget stuff sacks - yes, they keep things organized. However, they do not settle well inside a pack, and as a result, the amount of space wasted between the stuff sacks adds up. Leave the stuff sacks at home (except, perhaps, for first aid supplies and food…).

The bricks and mortar principle, if you’re not familiar with it: put a couple of bricks at the bottom of your pack (top-loading, preferably) - definitely the sleeping bag, and such items as a stove or fuel bottle - then fill in the gaps between and around the bricks with mortar: clothing, loose socks, gloves, and yes, even underwear. Pack the heavy stuff lower down in your pack, to keep your center of gravity low (nothing worse than crossing a narrow snow bridge with a balance-killing top-heavy pack), and keep adding a layer of bricks, then mortar, then another layer of bricks, until all that’s left is the tent and fly.

Assuming you’ll share a tent, one partner packs the tent itself (it makes great mortar as you cram it in all the tiny empty spaces between everything else in your pack), and the other partner, the poles and fly. Split the common food the same way. Strap crampons, helmet, ice axe, shovel, snow stakes and other common gear on the outside of your pack, ensuring that no “loose bits” or straps can snag at branches, rocks or even ice as you move up and down the mountain.

Our two guides inspected everyone’s gear as we packed - did we have the right clothing, too few or too many layers? Did we have the requisite types of socks, gloves, mittens, hats? Did we have only just the toiletries that were essential - toothbrush and toothpaste, wipes, TP, Purell? (I did sneak in a travel size deodorant - to avoid going insane…) Glacier-grade sunglasses? And the list went on, as each item went into the pack.

At the end of the packing lesson - I was positively thrilled to find that not only did everything fit in my pack, but it was actually easier and more comfortable to carry.

Chatting with the other lady in the group (Sue), we both realized that we had very similar backgrounds - fascinated with climbing, we wanted to see if it was really for us, and wanted to learn the right skills. She was a competitive mountain biker, but had trained extra hard for this. She was still worried about not keeping up with the guys. My confidence in that department had increased when I had concluded that the guys around us were not all world-class athletes. I was pretty sure that while I wouldn’t be in front of the group, I wouldn’t be last. Most importantly - the group was friendly, and the guys didn’t seem to look at Sue and I as anything less than equal team members. After all, we all carried the same amount of weight on our backs.

Heading off for Mount Baker, Todd drove the big SUV with all of us in it, hauling a trailer containing all the packs and gear. All passengers were sound asleep within 15 minutes of leaving the AAI office. Three hours later, we reached Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, and approached the trail head. This was it…

Putting on my rental Koflach climbing boots, I strapped on my pack, grabbed my climbing poles, and set off on the trail, with Todd, Winslow, Sue and the rest of our group (ten of us in total).

On the Mountain
I had barely gone 30 minutes before I started thinking, “Oh boy - my hips, my back, my legs hurt already. I’m in trouble! I can’t start asking for a break, it’s only been 30 minutes!” I took a couple of deep breaths, looked around and noticed that everyone else (other than the guides) looked to be in a similar mixed state of doubt and anxiety, and decided to plow on and ignore the pain. After another 30 minutes, I had found my groove, the pain was gone, and I had settled into a comfortable rhythm.

We came to a crossing where the bridge had collapsed and the only way across was logs stretched eight feet over the creek. Huh. Lesson two: when crossing water (whether wading in, or on a bridge), unbuckle your pack’s hip belt and chest strap. If you end up swimming, you’ll need to ditch the pack in a hurry to avoid sinking. To my disappointment, I wasn’t even able to step up onto the logs, about 3 feet off the ground, as my pack and the plastic boots made it hard to step up and balance. Sensing my fear (yes, that’s what it was…), Winslow grabbed my pack and literally danced across the logs to the other side. She repeated that with her own pack, and then Sue’s! I was impressed - Winslow was about half my size! Wow!

Late in the afternoon, we reached our first camp site. By then, it was clear that both Sue and I were in better shape than some of the guys, and we had no trouble keeping up with Winslow, who was setting pace at the head of our group. Trailing about half an hour behind us, with Todd, was one of the guys, who was suffering badly. Pulling into camp, he was exhausted, nauseous, and pretty weak. This wasn’t due to altitude sickness, but to the fact that he was severely out of shape! To his credit, he didn’t stop, and persevered over the rest of the week.

That evening in camp, we all learned how to start our stoves and feed ourselves - yes, it is part of mountaineering school, lesson number… three? If you’re out there and depend on your climbing buddy to prime and start the stove, how are you going to melt snow for water, if your buddy breaks a leg and can’t move?

We had dinner, and then learned to fabricate our Prussik knots, from the length of climbing rope we had been told to purchase and bring. Prussiks are knotted ropes used by climbers to climb up along a fixed rope when hanging vertical (in other words, when your feet are not on the ground). If you’ve seen the movie “Touching the Void”, you’ll remember Joe Simpson attempting to Prussik up the rope after going off over the overhang, before Simon cut the rope.

Three Prussiks in all: one for the upper body, two loops for the feet. The idea with Prussiks is that you can slide them up a fixed rope, and they will hold your weight, as they “lock” in place and do not slip. We would get to train using our Prussiks the next night. The first night’s lesson was simply to tie them - which was hard enough for those of us not well versed in the art of tying knots! We also learned to tie a bowline - pretty important, to tie into the rope.

The next morning had us boiling water from a nearby creek, making breakfast, and repacking our packs. The only downside of the bricks and mortar packing method, is that you find yourself packing, unpacking and repacking the entire contents of your pack at least twice a day. The upside - it doesn’t take long before you make it an easily repeatable process that takes only a few minutes. We didn’t break camp that morning, as the plan was to climb higher that day, but come back to our campsite that night.

Our second day took us above the tree line right away, and we soon had a training session with one of the Park’s Rangers, who taught us about the geology of glaciers, how crevasses are formed, and how to read the movements of a glacier. Our trail was just on the edge of the moraine, looking down on the glacier (whose name now escapes me), so we had a perfect classroom to learn these important lessons.

Still further on, Todd and Winslow taught us how to use a compass. Some of us already were adept users, while others (me included) pulled a brand new shiny compass out of our packs. On this climb, we couldn’t really get lost, and didn’t need the compass. However, the point was to learn to become mountaineers - and using a compass to navigate in the wilderness is a crucial lesson, even now with GPS units and near-ubiquitous cell phone access to SAR services.

Let the Children Play!
Later in the afternoon, we reached snow levels. Woo-hoo! We got to learn how to walk on snow! Wait a minute - I’m from Canada, I’ve walked on snow my entire life, what could they possibly teach me?

All kinds of good and fun things, as it turned out. The right way (safest with the least effort) of walking uphill on snow, cross-over steps, walking with crampons, heel stepping on the way down, not to mention the hour of fun we then spent learning to glissade and self-arrest! Like kids, we threw ourselves down the slope, on our butts head uphill, on our butts head downhill, on our stomachs head first, and even on our backs head downhill - since this was training, the slope ended gently at the bottom with no crevasse to swallow us if we failed to self-arrest. Within a few attempts, all of us had picked up the technique of grasping the adze of the axe with one hand, and digging the pick into the snow while putting all our upper body weight on it. It really was loads of fun!

We then learned to rope up, tying into the rope via our climbing harness, and practiced our new walking skills uphill. Slightly different story - a little more intense now. Each rope of 3 or 4 climbers (the three “girls” were roped up together) made its way up on the glacier, getting to a series of challenging crevasses that we had to learn to negotiate. Walking roped up in a straight line is very different than negotiating crevasses, where you have to constantly adjust the slack in the rope in case someone falls in. Interesting intellectual challenge, actually, especially if needed in the middle of the night… Better to train during theday, like we were doing.

We reached a flat expanse on the glacier, where, still roped up, we took a long and well-deserved break. We would return the next day to build our Base Camp for our summit bid two days later.

Heading back down, we stopped at “the Prussik tree”, a spot that Todd and Winslow had used before to teach Prussiking skills. A climbing rope tossed over a sturdy branch and well tied to an anchor became our fixed line. The first guys who tried found it challenging to even get off the ground. The rope itself is elastic, so it took a few “bodies” before we all figured out how to get started properly. Some of the guys made it look quite hard, so Sue and I were dreading this. She went next, and with a big grin on her face, Prussiked her way up the rope a good 15-20 feet without breaking a sweat. I then gave it a try, and found that all the ab work I’d done had paid off! It’s all about using your abs to pull your body up, surprisingly. Picture a caterpillar - stretch, fold, stretch, fold…. With every step up in the Prussik stirrups, your abs allow you to stretch and fold your body, as you move the Prussik knots up the fixed rope. Again - loads of fun, if you’re in shape…

Base Camp
Setting our early the next day, we broke camp and reloaded our packs with 60lbs of gear again. Ooof… Walking uphill in crampons the day before had been a good lesson, but doing it fully loaded with 60lbs was a different story, especially when it came to crossing some dodgy crevasses. Keeping your balance in such situations is not obvious. Recommendation: when training with 60lbs, put yourself in off-balance situations (walk a low balance beam, for instance; or climb up and down a chair, to get used to high steps with a big load).

Arriving at the location for our base camp, Todd and Winslow first marked the edge of camp with visible stakes - this was important, as anything outside of that perimeter was unexplored territory, and therefore could hide dangerous crevasses. Lesson number… well, I lost track…: leveling a site to build camp. Lots of shoveling, digging with ice axe, building igloo-like walls to shelter the tents. The sun was beaming, and despite the altitude and glacier, we were drenched in sweat by the time the tents were up. Last but certainly not least: the latrines.

Which brings me to another critical lesson: Leave No Trace. There’s the lesson: leave-no-trace. Obviously, it means, don’t leave any garbage on the mountain; it also means, don’t leave any food or even crumbs; and for human waste, yes, you can write your name in the snow (though keep the font small, will you?), but solid waste must be carried back down the mountain and deposited in appropriate containers at the bottom. How do you do that, you ask? Using “blue bags” (http://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/leavenotrace.htm), which are plastic bags containing something that looks like cat litter and which helps in the decomposition of human waste.

Hiding behind our snow latrine wall, one would lay open the bag on the ground, do his/her business in the bag, then tie it all up and stuff it into another bag that one would carry in his/her pack… safely. An outside pocket works well for that, I found. This whole business had one of our team mates exclaim, “I was expecting to lose weight on this trip, or at least carry less weight down as we ate the food along the way… Not quite, since I have to carry my crap down!” If climbers had figured out a way of doing this on Everest, Mont Blanc, and other iconic mountains, there would be far less crap lying around there… but that’s for another day’s writing.

Finally, after building walls around the tents and making ourselves nice and comfy, we started getting dinner ready. We had learned to dig a hole for the tent’s vestibule, so that we could sit inside the tent, and put on boots comfortably. We could also cook safely with the stove just outside, while standing nearly upright in the vestibule. The weather was beautiful, the temperature still in the high forties, and we watched a gorgeous sunset.

Blizzard! In August?
We woke up with two feet of fresh snow the next morning, engulfed in a full-on blizzard (this was mid-August, three hours north of Seattle!). No one wanted to get up early and dig out, so through the noise of the wind, we shouted from tent to tent that we’d linger in bed for a while longer, hoping the storm would abate somewhat.

Around 9am, we had no choice but to get up and start the day. We still had a lot to learn that day, before contemplating a summit attempt that night.

Our lessons for the day included building snow anchors, belaying techniques, rappelling (inside a crevasse - very exciting!), and the culmination of our lessons, rapidly building a pulley and anchor system to pull someone out of a crevasse. Taking turns rappelling about 20 feet inside a crevasse (blue, white, deep dark at the bottom…), we each played the role of “helpless climber fallen into crevasse” to be extracted by the rest of our team. The weather had barely let up since morning, and it was significantly colder than the previous two days. By the time we learned and practiced “clipping/unclipping unto the fixed rope”, visibility was close to nil, so the exercise took on a realism that gave the situation a bit more gravitas. By late afternoon, we had traveled less than 200 yards from camp, but we were exhausted. We melted snow for dinner and a brew (coffee, tea, hot cocoa) and to fill our water bottles for the next night and day, then hit the sack. Due to uncertain weather conditions, our summit bid was at risk. Continuing blizzard conditions would prevent us from going up. But the worst case scenario would be if we woke up at midnight, and faced conditions that forced a debate within the team: is it safe to go up or not? Would we be over-confident newbies, or over-cautious newbies? What kind of decision would the guides ultimately impose on us?

Summit Bid
The weather gods took care of the decision for us. When we got up at midnight, the wind had died down completely, the sky was clear and filled with stars: it was perfect. We roped up to leave camp at about 1am, and the march upward and onward began. We had our ropes well tuned by then: Winslow led mine, with Sue in the middle and me at the back. We initially led the procession, but we hit a dead-end trying to go around a crevasse, and ended up the last rope. A couple of hours into the climb, we stopped on a hard-packed snow field, with a mild incline (which didn’t feel so mild then) and strapped on our crampons. Another lesson learned: sit on your pack and hold on tight, don’t let your crampons, pack, or yourself, slide down the hill…

With crampons on, hard pack snow and ice under our feet, the long hours of the night started creeping up on us. That’s when it becomes hardest to maintain focus and concentration, and (to me, at least) the whole adventure starts feeling like the worst idea I’ve ever had. “Someone said this was fun? I’m paying for this? I’m supposed to enjoy this misery?” are questions that go through my head in these climbing circumstances, until I make a conscious effort to change my frame of mind, and start focusing again on the task at hand.

Now - I speak from experience when I say that the more you climb, the better focus you maintain, and the faster you can push aside negative thoughts in favor of singled-minded perseverance; that does not exclude the ability to make sensible decisions (to turn around in bad weather for instance), but rather heightens the senses to focus on the right things. We stopped briefly every hour or so, to re-hydrate and absorb some calories (Clif Bar, candy, trail mix), throwing on an extra layer to preserve our warmth during breaks.

I was still feeling strong when dawn started to break, the first glimpses of daylight in the distance infusing us all with new life. What a feeling - rejuvenation, energy, adrenalin, hope, determination… Everyone seemed to have a new bounce in their step. We could feel the long night - no doubt about that - but the summit was in sight, and the hardest part was over, kind of…

The last long incline was still in front us. When the going uphill gets tough, I always resort to counting steps. So up I went, step-step-axe plant, step-step-axe plant, crunch-crunch-plant… One and two and three, one and two and three, un et deux et trois, endlessly, it seemed. At one point, Winslow and Sue reached the top of the last steep incline, and suddenly increased their pace! One-two-three-one-two-three-one-two-three! Taking a deep breath, I realized everyone had crested the top of the wall, and I stood alone at the end of the rope, the others invisible to me. Wow… Cool! A few minutes later, I reached the crest as well, and saw that we were about 15-20 minutes from the summit.

We took our final steps up together, and all hugged and took pictures and celebrated on the summit of Mount Baker, at around 9am. Looking north, I saluted Canada proudly - did it ever look pretty! Since the strongest climber on a rope should always be uphill, to act as an anchor in case the whole rope slips and falls, Winslow had to descend last on our rope - which made me the leader! So I ended up leading our three ropes on the way down. For an experienced climber, this was child’s play: retrace our very visible steps down! For a newbie like me, it took a few minutes to get used to the feeling of having no one in front of me, and having to make sure that I was leading everyone back to camp.

Needless to say - after those first few minutes - I loved every moment of it. It was an incredible feeling, to have the whole gloriously sparkling mountain in front of me, unmarred by the presence of others, glistening in the sun, rolling and undulating like a white ocean.

Retracing our steps meant that I was generally safe from the risk of heading into a hidden crevasse, but still had to remember that in the rising temperature, snow bridges and crevasse edges were much softer than they had been in the middle of the night.

We managed to avoid danger, and other than fatigue, didn’t have any problems. Oh - I forget the fact that as I peeled outer layers, I eventually was dressed all in black, attracting the heat of the sun like a reflector. I became overheated and de-hydrated, and called a break. Todd and Winslow tried to convince me that camp was “just around the corner”, but I needed to take off my black mid-layer and drink some water - urgently. Getting going again after 5 minutes, I sheepishly walked into camp… a mere ten minutes later. One more lesson: don’t wear black, it’s deadly on a glacier.

We ate and rested in camp for a bit, then started re-packing our heavy loads and dismantling the tents. Leaving camp carrying 60lbs again, we had already been up and walking for 12 hours straight. Those 60lbs didn’t feel so good, but once again, mind over matter won the day, and we proceeded downhill.

Downhill is painful too. Knees hurt, fatigue just keeps accumulating, and it’s easy to let one’s guard down. Not a good thing to do. One team mate, while negotiating one of the last crevasses we would see, slipped and snagged his right crampon in his left pant leg. Result? He punctured his thigh, not too badly, but enough to bother him a fair amount for the remaining four hours of descent in front of us.

We eventually stepped off the glacier back onto the trail, re-crossed the creek, and reached the parking lot at 5pm. We had been going almost non-stop for 16 hours. A bit tired, yes. A bit sore, yes. But relatively speaking, not too badly scarred! Heading back to Seattle, we stopped for fast food along the way - we all devoured our meals, in need of calories, but all the while fighting the urge to sleep right then and there. We settled into the SUV, and hoping that Todd was more awake than the rest of us, since he was driving, promptly fell asleep heading back to the city.

From Armchair to Actual Climber
The course and climb confirmed it for me: I love climbing mountains.

The course offered by Alpine Ascents is not unique; in fact, several outfits in Canada, the US, Europe, and New Zealand (amongst other places), offer similar week-long courses. Alpine Ascents had been strongly recommended to me by an acquaintance who had climbed the seven summits with them (and has since climbed Everest a second time, also with AAI). I was very pleased with their professionalism and attention to detail, as well as their focus on safety and teaching. Yamnuska, out of Canmore, Alberta, Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI), Mountain Madness, and several other similar companies also boast good reputations. It’s worth phoning and asking questions, and reading every word on their web site. Some have you sleeping in huts, so the “teaching” is not as complete since you don’t learn full mountaineering and snow camping skills, but your choice depends on your goals and desire for comfort (personally, give me a tent over a hut full of snorers any day…). My bottom line: if you want to become a mountaineer, invest in a course - not only will you get a mountain climb out of it, you will learn skills that could save a life one day. If you’re learning from buddies and fellow climbers, make sure they are qualified to teach you all the right skills, the right way, while also being able to look out for your safety on the mountain. Oh - and get a copy of “Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills” (Don Graydon (Ed.), Kurt Hanson (Ed.), Mountaineers Society, Mountaineers Books ), and read it.

You might ask what I’ve climbed since… Sadly, a year later, my scheduled trip to Mount Rainier (also with AAI) was thwarted at the very last minute by a back injury (which eventually led to surgery). But last year, I got to climb Chachani, in Peru - no crevasses and no ropes, but crampons, ice axe, and a new altitude record, at 19, 931 feet. I remain a happy climber. Check out http://www.alpineascents.com/cascades6-dtd.asp and hit the Slideshow button (top right) - most of the pictures are from our course! Slide 38 is our summit shot - I’m wearing the blue jacket, standing at the back. Note the smiles all around) Oh, and on slide 29, that’s me at the very front…

Submitted by Helene Barrette. You can read more about Helene’s adventures on TravelPod and connect with her on Twitter.

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