Mountain Skills Weekend

Our increasingly regular team of top-notch backcountry buddies headed up Icefields Parkway on the weekend for some education, skills practice and skiing.

Steve, Iain, Rowley and I made it out to Lake Louise for Friday night, and settled into our two-queen-bed-for-four-large-guys accommodation at the Mountaineer. The team was in good spirits for tomorrow's day of glacier rescue training and rope handling instruction, and the healthy banter was running fast and loose. Before turning in, we diligently set two alarms to ensure we could take advantage of the free breakfast and somehow get the four of us through our morning routines with only one toilet. After enduring the night of excessive flatulence and Cranny's frequent outbursts of detailed and instructive sleep talking, we awoke to discover that both alarms had completely failed and we were 12 minutes from our meetup time with our guide, Kevin Hjertaas at Laggans at 8am! In a feat of coordination and rapid action that is usually only seen in highly trained soldiers in  a war-zone, the four of us somehow got out the door packed and into Laggans by 8:05 and even more miraculously were fully equipped with all our gear!

We had a bit of a brief from Kevin over coffee, then headed up to Crowfood Glades to get into it. It was a pretty chilly morning, around -15, with some low cloud around Lake Louise, but it cleared up as we were gearing up at the trailhead and it turned into a beautiful clear morning. First up was self rescue techniques using prussiks. Kevin set up some fixed lines off a large boulder and set us at climbing the rope with a pair of prussiks. A couple of points to remember where:

• Set the prussik knots at wrist height, then tie off the top one tight to your harness and the lower one to your knee

• Make sure to thread one strand of the leg loop through your harness, so there is a passive backup if either prussik fails
• You can make a loop at the bottom of the leg loop and double it over your boot so that it stays put on your ski boot and you don't risk ripping off a buckle or your foot slipping out

Next up was building a T-anchor - which is fairly intuitive, however a few good points:

• Make sure the wall is vertical or overhanging so the skis can't ride up the front wall
• Dig out a trench for the sling to your load, so the force is down and out rather than upwards
• ACMG standard is 40cm of 1-Finger snow, so dig down until you get to good snow
• A clove hitch works well to secure a sling to your anchor skis

We got ourselves warm by cruising up into some meadows that would give us space to practice roping up and travelling roped and then the crevasse rescue systems. Reminders for travelling roped:

• Spacing of 10-15M between skiers

• Use a figure of 8 on a bight to tie into the middle of the rope

• Attach one prussik on the leader-side of your figure 8 and tuck the loose ends into a pocket
• Keep slack out of the rope when travelling
• Switchbacks make keeping the rope taught awkward, so aim to make a wide sweeping uptrack when roped
• Make sure your team is travelling across the line of suspected crevasses when travelling on the glacier

This was all pretty straightforward, so onto the main challenge - assisted rescue of a roped team member. There is a ton written about the systems of hauling but this is what I remember from Kevin's simple system advice:

• Next skier back from the fallen skier takes the main load until an anchor can be built
• Build an anchor right away, and clove hitch the rope into the anchor behind the guy holding the load (this would usually be some form of deadman, not a tree in the middle of a glacier!!). Transfer the load to the anchor, by easing towards the crevasse and letting the weight be taken by the anchor - try to eliminate any slack in the clove hitch first

• The figure 8 on a bight that the weight-bearer is released from can be used as a 'virtual anchor point' or just extension from the anchor so that is is cleaner and away from the anchor
• With a prussik or Munter Hitch as a belay, someone should go to the edge of the crevasse and a) make contact with the fallen skier and b) strengthen up the edge of the crevasse under the rope with ski poles/backpack/shovel handle etc.
• That person can then take either the spare rope - or if there is enough slack in the main line -attach it to the anchor and drop a loop to the fallen skier - make sure you don't lose the free end of this rope!
• Meanwhile, the fallen skier's job is to take off and secure his skis to his backpack or hang them off the rope in front of his figure 8, and do the same with his backpack. These will then just follow him up at half speed on the original rope
• Once the loop is dropped to him, he just clips into it with a locking biner
• Take the loose end of the drop loop and tie a Garda Hitch to the anchor as a capture device

• With enough guys at this point, just haul up the fallen skier, making sure someone is near the edge to maintain contact with them and assist them over the edge when the time comes
• If there is not enough manpower, tie a prussik on the active side of the drop loop, clip a biner into the 'why knot' and then clip the loose end of the haul line through this biner and haul on the loose end, as this will have doubled the mechanical advantage. The tail of the prussik should be tied into the anchor so that if you drop the rope the capture is protected (garda hitch achieves the same thing of capturing progress on the haul)

• If the system runs out of space before the fallen skier is out, you can add another prussik and double up the mechanical advantage again

With all that learned and practiced, we were getting pretty cold, and the snow was moving in, so we packed up and skinned up the ridge to find a nice selection of steep lines to drop into off traditional Crowfoot Glades. The snow was badly faceted, but still supportive enough that the ski quality was quite good, though with no fresh snow for several weeks,the lines were not un-tracked. Crafty Coach Kevin donned his brown warm layer and stood behind a tree at the bottom to watch us all ski down to him on our chosen lines... skiing assessment I believe!

We rounded out the evening with a pretty serious hot-tub and steam room session at the Mountaineer and a hearty meal at the Lake Louise Hostel, (with one of the most iron-deficient, angry vegan waitresses that we have ever encountered) and continued to grill Steve over his dating life! We were joined by Paul over dessert and finished off the evening at the Lake Louise dive bar for a night cap. We farewelled Steve and Paul joined us at the Mountaineer.

Sunday alarms all went off flawlessly, and after Rowley enjoyed a cup of rancid beef dripping for coffee from the free breakfast buffet at the Mountaineer (!!), we headed once more up the Icefield Parkway. There was a dusting of fresh snow and the drive was spectacular as the sun poked through and illuminated a few select peaks.

Our objective was to check out Parker Ridge and Hilda Glades, given that we rarely have a 2-hour headstart from Calgary, and they are a fair way up the parkway. We parked at the Hilda Hostel, and for future beta, you can just cross the highway and head straight up the drainage across from the parking lot. 

Unfortunately conditions were pretty poor, with a pretty stunning combination of wind-scouring to base, stiff wind slab and bottomless facets. Not a particularly concerning snowpack from an avalanche perspective, but not the most amazing ski quality. The views, on the other hand, were outstanding, as was the company and the simple enjoyment that comes from just exploring a new area and wandering around in the mountains.

It was windy at the ridge, so we did a quick transition and skied out to the moraines. 'Variable' would probably be the most apposite way to describe the snowpack!

Our other objective for the day was to do some avalanche rescue scenario practice, and Rowley set up an excellent and detailed multiple burial scenario. We all unearthed some rusty skills, and took the opportunity to really brush up on fine beacon search, team digging and general group management skills. We also took the opportunity to practice with Rowls' rescue sled which worked really well and proved how much easier it would make a victim evacuation! A lesson learned was to make sure you put lots of thermal insulation under the victim in the sled, as Rowls got quite cold laying down on the snow even for a short time.