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Yesterday, I had the opportunity to practice some glacier travel and crevasse rescue on the White River Glacier at Mt. Hood. I didn't do any riding, but kinda wished I would have brought my board as the glacier looked really good.

Crevasse rescue skills are valuable to know, but I hope I never have to use them in real life. I thought others on this forum might enjoy some of the pictures I took. Here's a few shots from the inside of a major crevasse I repelled into.....you really don't want to fall into something like this while snowboarding....







We set up your basic Z pulley system which worked well for hauling someone out of a crevasse if you have two people to pull. If you're traveling with just one other person, and one of you falls in the hole, you're pretty much screwed. If you can get the load transfered to an anchor and have enough room, you can set up a 5 to 1 or 6 to 1 system and haul forever, and get your buddy out.





After several hours of practice, we headed over to a large patch of bare ice to look at a cool water formation flowing down the glacier....



Here's a shot looking back at our packs where we did the rescue practice.....the snow below this would have been really nice for riding. Probably still 1500 vertical of pretty smooth snow with some crevasse negotiation. You can see some of the snowfield in the picture above with the water formation.



All in all it was a fun day. Anyone venturing out into glaciated terrain should make time to practice these skills to keep them fresh. I was suprised how much I had forgotten since the last time I set these systems up....

Nice work!
Its always smart to sharpen your Glacier Travel skills.