Ice Climbing and Clambering on a Glacier

We set off at 7.00am in the morning to make it to the base camp of the glacier by 9.00am. We made a quick stop at the base camp to collect our equipment and have some tea and biscuits before the final part of our trek to the glacier. The second section held the treat of crossing the river using a fixed rope, so we had to drag ourselves across.

After a further climb over a woodland pass we decended onto the glacier. Our guide gave us a demostration of how to use the crampons and a few pointers about how to walk safely. The basics of which are - don´t step on anyones feet, don´t kick anyone and walk like a duck which felt a bit quackers! Luckily Nicky had to decided to stay at the hostel otherwise I would have had a few spikes up my jacksee. The crampons are excellent they allow you to walk on icey surfaces that are at extreme angles!

A few glacial facts:
• Glaciers are formed by large amounts of snow falling, melting and compressing into ice.
• There is no air in the ice when the glacier is formed in this way, so the glacier looks blue instead of white.
• When a body of ice is formed and is greater than 20 tonnes it can be classed as a glacier.
• The weight of the ice and snow high up the glacier causes the glacier to move slowly down the mountin valley. As the glacial moves, rocks and debris under the glacier are crushed into small pieces which form a lubricanting layer allowing the glacier to continue moving. As the glacier shifts down the valley the ice breaks and cracks creating large in the glacier.
• At the end of the glacier there is usually a lake and river formed from the glacial melt. The lake takes on a bluish turquoise colour from the small particles of debris.
• Where the glacier meets the lake, this section is called the tongue of the glacier. High up in the mountains small glaciers form called hanging glaciers, which I have renamed the `ears of the glacier´!
• 5,000 years ago the glacial tongue which I walked on was 200km longer than it is today. Since the last ice age, the earth has slowly warmed and the tongue has retracted.

We also has a chance to try ice climbing on a small wall in the glacier, this was excellent, if not a little slippy. Wacking ice axes into the wall was harder than it looked and the once grippy crampons suddenly were not much help with a very hard compacted vertical wall of ice.

In all I spent about 3 hours walking and climbing on the glacier, it was really excellent. The 4 hour trek to the glacier and 4 hour return was definately worth it, even if I had to walk like a duck the next day because my legs were so stiff!

On the way back we were lucky enough to see a skunk carrying its little baby in it´s mouth. It was very cute until she got a bit perturbed by us and chased us away, there we were 4 grown males running away from a tiny fluffy animal, felt like something from the Monty Pythons Holy Grail! Better that, then stinking for a week!