Week Two: 30 Day Mountaineering Training with NOLS Alaska

Alaska is home to some of the most beautiful, rugged, and technical mountains in the world. There is no doubt why this place has become one of the best mountaineering locations worldwide. Through NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School), I spent 30 days learning mountaineering skills while living and traveling on glaciers.

Preview: During the 30 day NOLS mountaineering course we encountered 24 hour sunlight, crossed tracks of grizzly bears, fell into crevasses, stomped out runways for planes to land on the glacier, summited a technical mountain, made pizza in the backcountry from scratch and so much more.

You will read about all of these moments during the NOLS 30 day mountaineering training course below! Also, if you stick to the end, I have a few extra resources for you.

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Day 8: How To Self Arrest?

Today was primarily dedicated to traveling up the glacier and working on snow school. This encompassed finding a sloped snowy area where we practiced different types of mountaineering steps to maximize safety in steep snowy terrain.

We also worked on how to self arrest and practiced sliding down a steep, snowy section of the mountain in different “odd” positions. The goal was to stimulate us sliding down the mountains in random positions and get under control via self arresting.

Lastly, we saw a few avalanches today which was cool to witness up close!

Day 9: Probing For Crevasses- What Is A Probe?

Today we left the bare ice section of the glacier and advanced higher up through snow covered glacier. This required us to rope up in teams of 3 and 4 people and travel via one leader in the front who is supposed to probe areas that look like possible crevasses could be.

A probe is basically a long 7+ foot pole that you poke through the snow to search for possible crevasses hiding beneath you. We not only probe during times of travel, (when signs of crevasses are prevalent), but also need to probe basically every square foot when we arrive at camp for the night.

Also, today we aimed to change our schedule to getting up at 4am. The reason for this is that the snow is safer and easier to travel on because it’s still hard due to the overnight lower temperatures. As the day goes on, snow typically becomes softer and softer so we aim to get to camp earlier in the day.

Day 10: ⁣Skills Day

Today was a heavily skills oriented day. We went over making snow anchors using pickets and ice axes, MSR liquid fuel stove repair and cleaning, and briefly talked about one of our 2 systems for crevasse rescue.

It’s quite fun making snow anchors using the “dead man” technique. This is where you bury something about a foot in the snow as your anchor, and after some time, the snow hardens and will create a very solid and secure anchor. We buried everything from ice axes, stuff sacks, trekking or ski poles, Nalgenes (for fun) and pickets as our anchors.

I spent the last hour of the evening patching up some holes in my gear. I had a couple in my puffy coat and some larger holes in my gaiters.

Day 11: Solar Water Still

Today I learned one of my favorite little tricks to build a water still using nothing but a shovel and snow. As you can see in the photo, you basically dig out a couple of feet of snow and create an “udder” looking thing that will eventually guide the settling water from the snow on top down to a drip.

Then, you pile a large amount of snow on the udder location to eventually create a spot for the water that is in the snow to seep down into the udder area and eventually a water collection device.

This trick is great because it saves fuel when you are out on a long expedition!

Day 12: Setting Up Basecamp

After a day of travel, we arrived at the spot where we are going to re-ration our food via a bush plane and spend a few days going over mountaineering skills. When we arrived at camp, we built out our kitchens in the snow and I built 2 solar water stills (previous post shows what they are) which work great.

Later in the evening, we stomped out a 100 yard runway using our snowshoes for our pilot Mike to land the bush plane. He will land within the next couple days. Due to weather, it’s important to get things ready for him in case there are any weather challenges that could create dangerous landing conditions. Otherwise, we risk being stuck on the glacier without food.

Day 13: More Knots and Crevasse Rescue Practice, Re-ration

Munter Mule Overhand. This is the name of the knot(s) that we practiced today which proved to be quite challenging to get the hang of.

We re-rationed today as well. Cool seeing a bush plane fly and land on the snow in the middle of the wilderness.

Day 14: Summit Attempt

Today was the first day we got to put some of our skills to the test. Such as climbing in steep terrain, setting up snow protection anchors, crevasse rescue team haul technique, knots, and much more. We were working our way up a steep snow covered slope to try and get onto a ridge to eventually work our way to the summit, but a layer of bare glacial ice up near the ridge prevented us from getting up.

It was really cool being able to rope up and travel up the side of a mountain even though we weren’t able to summit. In my head I remember thinking “so I think this is what makes mountaineering rewarding” as I looked out into the distance of a field of never ending mountains.

More crevasse rescue using the “Team Haul” method in the evening.

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Thanks for checking out week one of the 30 Day Mountaineering Training!

Here are a few more related articles:

• Week Two: 30 Days Alone In The Wilderness
• Week Three: 30 Days Alone In The Wilderness
• Week Four: 30 Days Alone In The Wilderness