The Grinnell Glacier Trip

This is basically just a version of my summer trip report with some more pictures for my friends. During the summer of 1998 I managed to make it up to Waterton for a few days. During that time Dad, Chris and I all went down to Glacier National Park to hike Grinnel Glacier. The idea was to hike up to the Glacier and do some climbing in the crevasses. I should say a little about the hike up. It was only about five or six miles to where we climbed, but I had rather misdressed for the occasion. I was still tired from the drive up from Utah and somehow decided to wear my fleece pants. Well by the time we got hiking I was very hot. Both Chris and Dad were in shorts and were complaining about the heat. I was dying. I ended up unzipping them up, and stuffing the legs back into the pants. It's hard to explain, but the pants have zippers going all the way up each leg. By unzipping them I made what ended up looking like a big poofy fleece skirt. Kind of goofy looking, but considerably cooler. Still it was hot. I think that heat stalls me - anything above 80 is too hot for me. But Dad and Chris think I'm a wimp to cold weather and are amazed at how I handle the heat. It is kind of funny. An other fun part about the hike was that I wore my plastic boots. They were fine going up and I easily kept up with Dad and Chris in their hiking boots. Unfortunately the insole was worn out and coming back down my feet became quite sore.

Once up on the glacier we traversed up to the edge of the cliff. There were some goot crevasses up there and we got to practice our glacial travel techniques along the way. Once we were at the crevasses we put in some anchors and rappelled down inside. If you've never been inside a crevasse you really need to go. There is something about them that strikes a primeval fear. You are in this narrow crack that stretches out as far as you can see to either side. Above you are small clumps of snow and ice plastered against the wall. You just feel the glacier folding in on you and all that ice and snow above you seems as if it will fall on you at any moment. There is also this eerie blue hue to everything, formed from whatever light manages to make in through the glacier into the crevasse. The sound is what is creepy though. You hear the entire glacier. Any collapse of ice echoes through the glacier and into the crevasse. It sounds like it is there beside you. You literally hear the glacier creeping down the mountain. There is nothing like it.

Unfortunately I'd been a bit of an idiot gearing up. I'd worn my monopoints instead of my dual points. They did not climb well in this kind of ice. The top part of the crevasse was where the rift cut through the hard snow making up the top twenty or thirty feet of the glacier. A single blade on crampons simply doesn't climb what is effectively little more than very packed snow. There isn't enough bite. I had an interesting time getting up. The fact I'd not done any real technical ice climbing since nearly February didn't help. Slightly overhung ice and snow was hard to start out with. I made it, but it was a bit of effort.

The next crevasse we climbed I borrowed Chris' crampons they worked considerably better. I started to get my form back as well. I think both Dad and Chris were climbing better than I though. Of course Chris had had an exciting adventure ice climbing in Banff only a couple of months earlier. The last climb was the most exciting as it was a crevasse that was very overhung. It didn't look that bad while viewed from the side, but it turned out to be 45 degree overhung neve. (Sort of packed icy snow) Chris was down about 45 feet and had no other choice to climbing than to try and rig up some aiders and jumar out. (He'd taken some jumars down with him in case things went wrong) It was a lot steeper than it looks in the photo, believe me. If you look at it carefully draw a line from his feet to his hands and you can see just how steep it was.

AS I was belaying him and I kept thinking I heard something. As time went on the sound got clearer and clearer.. Apparely the whole time Chris climbing he was muttering, "OH BUGGER, OH BUGGER, OH BUGGER. . ." I couldn't stop laughing at him. I guess you had to be there, but this distressed sound really was kind of funny. Somehow he managed to make it all up without falling. He didn't have much choice as it was so overhung that had he come loose we'd have to have lowered him back down to the bottom for him to start again. Getting over the lip was the hardest part, I think, for him. He was pretty exhausted by the end.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day.