The goal of the class is to give students a good understanding of what their crampons can do.We'll hike up to the Elliot glacier from the Cloud Cap campground. We'll ascend the moraine till we can find good access to the Elliot Glacier. Once we reach the ice, we'll get started.
We'll have a brief discussion about the differences between German technique (frontpointing) and French technique (flatfooting) and of course American technique which generally takes the best of both worlds and combines them.
After this, we'll break into smaller groups and play follow the leader. We'll walk around on unexposed terrain and get aquinted w/ our crampons and ice axe in an area where a fall means a one foot skid.
Students will be able to choose the difficulty of their terrain. Some may opt for a 30 degree ramp and some will choose a short 60 degree wall. The goal isn't to see how hard of stuff you can climb but to get used to all of the different styles of climbing.
There are lots of fancy names for all of the techniques. I can't speak French so I've made up my own names. The general goal will be to ascend different angled slopes and get an idea of which techniques work better on different terrain.
In the afternoon will rappel into crevasses and prussik out. The idea is that if you fall into a crevasse on a route, it wont be the first time you've been in one and you'll be prepared to prussik out. Prussiking out of a crevasse is alot faster than rigging a z-pulley.
We'll rap up around 5 pm and head back to camp for a fire and share stories from this years climbing season.
On Sunday, we'll head back to the glacier and step it up just a bit. We'll rope up and play follow the leader on technical terrain. At climb school, you learned the basics of rope travel, now you'll get a chance to do it on real terrain.
In the late morning, we'll rig the cliffs for some top roped climbing. This is the icing on top but it's not the primary goal of the class. During the course of the class, everybody will be able to chose what they're comfortable with and how much challenge they want.Here's the basics.
Saturday 530 Meet at the Motor Pool
830 Arrive at cloud cap and set up camp
915 Head up tothe Elliot
600 Back at camp
Sunday 700 Breakfast
800 Head up to the glacier
300 Head back to camp.
Break camp and head home.
Gear:
Climbing: Harness, helmet, prussiks, belay device, gaiters, ice axe, crampons.
Clothing: Baselayers, windlayers, gloves (two pairs if you have them), hat, warm jacket, socks and undies.
Camping: Tent, toilet paper, gallon of water, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, headlamp, sit pad for glacier, camp chair, headlamp.
Food: Two lunches, one breakfast and one dinner. Lots of drinks and snacks. (You can pick your drinks for camp!) Stoves and dishes.
Directions to Cloud cap:
Take I5 N to the 205. Exit 12, Right on 212, vere to stay on the 212, Right on hwy 26. Merge to the 35. Take Highway 35 from Hood River and follow it until the turn off to Cooper Spur Skiarea, aproximately 23 miles past the town. Drive an other 2 1/2 miles to the Cooper Spur Skiarea (signs), and from there take forest service road 3512 towards Cloud Cap Inn/Tilly Jane. Park at the campground. This road can get rough sometimes over it's entire length of 9 miles
You may want to mapquest it to the play by play directions.
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