With a reasonable window of weather forecast for the morning, we were up before the sun and set out early with the hopes of practising some practical snow and ice skills. A cold early morning hike up the glacier to some steep snow slopes ensued.
The group split into two groups of four and focused on crampon skills, refining technique and learning different methods of walking to accommodate different slopes and terrains. Ensuring all points of our crampons were making good contact with the snow we experimented with a short walk up a hill then a climb up a steeper section of snow. For me personally this was the beginning of my understanding of just how important snow conditions are when climbing, with a low overnight freezing level the snow can feel firm and your crampons and ice axe feel solid and secure in the snow. However, on this morning I found this steep snow slope quite soft and found it difficult to trust each ice axe and crampon step.
As the weather began to roll in and visibility reduced, we moved onto self-arresting. We took it in turns sliding down a slope and stopping the slide by digging our ice axe into the snow. This was practiced with our crampons off as a crampon digging into the snow in an uncontrolled slide is an excellent recipe for a broken leg.
After we were cold and covered in snow we hiked over to a large block of ice and practiced placing ice screws and creating simple anchors. With the weather entering white-out conditions our lessons ended with a quick attempt at making a v-thread and a significant struggle threading a sling through the v-thread hole.
