I love how life has a way of showing you that your expectations are absolutely rubbish, and once they are blown out of the water, your entire experience of a situation can be radically different than you ever thought possible.
I was reminded of this recently on a glacier.
Twenty years ago I got on my first glacier, while working in northern Sweden as an instructor for Outward Bound. The region resembles parts of Alaska, with miles-wide open areas covered in heather, reindeer, and a lot of water; round, grassy, rolling peaks that make you feel you’re a miniature in some giant’s toy set; and nearby, higher mountains with glaciers. Although I was co-instructing the course with someone else, because I was new to glaciers, I acted as an assistant that day. I spent the day paying more attention to my students’ safety and experiences than my own experience. The glacier was magical, I do remember that. The ice was bare, and the cracks were easy to see. In some places it was a deep blue, and there were creeks of water running on top of the ice. I remember feeling pretty nervous, as if a hole would open up below me at any time, despite the fact I was on solid, exposed ice.
That was it for me and glaciers till I moved to the Pacific Northwest (PNW) twenty years later. Prior to coming to the PNW in 2011, I lived in Colorado, where there are no active glaciers. You may find a ginormous snow field, but it’s not “live” or moving, so cracks—ie: crevasses—aren’t a concern. There may be a moat between the snowfield and rock, but that’s easy to predict.
Over the years, I’ve had friends die falling into crevasses on big mountains, and heard similar stories from climbing partners over the years. Over time, I formed a phobia of crevasses. I’d imagine walking on a glacier, and in my mind’s eye I’d see a crack approaching, and feel its desire to reach out and grab me, eat me whole and cough up my sorry bones in a thousand years and a mile downstream.
The climber’s bible: Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills
Even so, I knew I wanted to get on glaciers again someday, because there are so many bigger mountains I want to climb. So when I moved up here I was psyched to have the chance. I’d forgotten what I’d learned about glacier travel in Sweden so long ago, and unlike many things, going out on a glacier having only “read the book” is a recipe for disaster. Even if it is the renowned climber’s bible, Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills!
Finally this spring, a friend went up with me to the Sulphide Glacier on Mount Shuksan to show me the ropes (literally!). The standard route on Shuksan lies on the upper reaches of the Sulphide, and isn’t considered difficult to navigate, as it’s not very crevassed. Smart parties do rope up though, as you really have no idea what might lurk six inches below the smooth cover of snow. On Shuksan, I learned the rope and gear system for two-person glacier travel, and we ambled up the route on a cloudy May day (trip report coming). No cracks, smooth going. Technically it was more like a long slog on a snowfield, and though I got to review roped glacier travel, there was none of the challenge of navigating around crevasses or *gasp* confronting my fear of them grabbing me for lunch.
looking down the Sulphide Glacier from the summit ridge on Mount Shuksan. for perspective, it’s about 3 miles from here to the other end
In July I got to turn up the heat a little (literally… it was about 80° on the glacier!) when I went with a local women’s climbing club to climb Austera and Eldorado Peaks up on the Eldorado-Inspiration-McAllister-Klawatti ice cap near North Cascades National Park (trip report to come!). This area is much more varied than the Sulphide, and I finally got the chance to stare into the face of some gaping spaces in the ice.
The Inspiration-Klawatti ice cap is a truly magical place. Set up high amongst gorgeous glaciated peaks, it’s comprised of four different glaciers that are connected to form one of the largest continuous glaciated areas in the lower 48. This ice does take navigation, and there were plenty of cracks.
the route across the ice cap is drawn in red. for scale, Moraine Lake is roughly a mile in length. image credit: Shauna McDaniel
I knew it would be a whole different story than the Sulphide. I was really happy to be up there with a bunch of women who were very experienced… and attached to the rope above and below me! However, getting up onto this area isn’t like going to one of the Washington volcanoes where you can see it from a distance and have a sense of it the whole way in on the approach. No preview mode. You can’t see it from any road. To get onto the glacier, after a steep uphill approach through the woods to treeline, you cross up over a rocky ridge, and drop down into another drainage where the toe of the glacier just dips over a different ridge. The ice cap is invisible at this point, except for this tiny toe that serves as an on-ramp.
As I stood on the rocky approach ridge at about 4am looking out at the toe of the glacier (July in the PNW, it gets light early!), I felt this undercurrent of fear and anxiety. I felt like I was rowing a boat toward the lip of a waterfall. Part of me wanted to throw up, and part of me was psyched. But I was with a super cool and experienced group of women who are committed to having fun and taking care of each others’ safety, and I knew I was in good hands.
I could go on about the awesomely fun day we had climbing, but that’s for the trip report. Here I’ll stick to the topic of expectations and glaciers with teeth.
First we had to hike up the glacier to a well-known peak named Eldorado. Our goal was another mountain called Austera Peak, which lies miles beyond, across the ice cap. Getting to Eldorado isn’t terriby technical. But once you cross the toe of the ridge onto the Inspiration glacier, suddenly it opens up into this ginormous region of crevasses, ice falls, and gaping holes. Just the stuff of my nightmares.
But it was so so beautiful.
I was transfixed.
And the first big crack we came to, I made my team stop so I could walk right up to the edge and gaze right down in.
well hello there! i’m holding the camera. not ginormous as crevasses go, but it’s a good start!
And I liked it.
In fact, I was super bummed that we had to rush both directions across the glacier that day due to the intense heat (heat + snow = soft snow -> humans fall into cracks) because I really just wanted to hike around and explore the crevasses. I wanted to get down in one. Use axes to climb out. Gaze at their mysterious blue beauty and wonder. Figure out what made them different from each other. Hold a conversation.
looking across the Inspiration glacier toward Klawatti col in the upper right corner under the thumb. it’s about 1.5 miles away
We didn’t actually have to navigate crevasses much that day (kudos to our leader who took the three roped teams on a fabulous route through the miles-long zone of cracks), but when we’d go by a crack, instead of the expected “oh-god-don’t-turn-your-head-just-look-forward-and-it-will-go-away-I-think-I’m-gonna-vomit”, I was all “ooh! that’s so cool!”
I had no idea. I think I fell in love.
Back to the statement I made at the start about expectations and rubbish and radical possibilities… since that day, every time I see an image of a glacier (lots of good trip reports online right now!), I gaze at the ice and feel this longing, this interest, and this sense of avid, friendly curiosity. But what surprises me most is I feel a sense of calm. I’m not afraid, and I no longer see the ice as my enemy. No mistake, I know the dangers of glacier travel, and I have yet to fall through a crack in the snow and find my heart in my mouth and cuss myself for ever considering being on the ice. But the fear is gone, and it has been replaced by confidence, familiarity, and curiosity. Instead of wondering if I’d do this or that mountain because it has a glacier, now I want to do it because it has one.
When these surprises happen, our world opens up. And if we give it some reflection, it becomes clear that much of the time, we are so much more than we allow ourselves to be. At times like this, I have to ask myself where else in my life I am creating human-eating glaciers when perhaps it’s just gorgeous blue cracks in a field of ice. How about you?
photo credit Shauna McDaniel
