July 19, 2022
- Start/End: Edge of Gannett Peak’s terminal moraine
- Distance: < 2 miles hiking
Our second’s night’s camp was perched on the edge of the terminal moraine, which seemed to be an ideal spot. Flat spots out here were few and far between. And it was even breezy enough to keep most of the mosquitoes at bay as we cooked out dinner last night.
As I wrote in yesterday’s journal, the NOLS method for meals had been much more elaborate than how I normally cook in the backcountry. Like many long-distance hikers, I stick to lightweight foods that are easy to hydrate with just boiling water – like dehydrated refried beans, ramen, shells and cheese, etc.
NOLS, on the other hand, tries to teach their students something more akin to what I was calling “expedition cooking,” where students make meals out of a bunch of traditional (but heavy) ingredients to like rice, summer sausage, cheese, dried pasta, curry powder and coconut milk, a sweet potato, powdered eggs, onions, etc.
Cooking was the original reason NOLS placed Emily, Prashant and I together. We were the three vegetarians in our crew of 12 people. So always moving together as a team meant we’d be able to eat any of the provisions our little group was carrying. But there was two downsides to the three of us being in a group together:
First off, we were laden with lots of “alternate” proteins. Apparently, the NOLS staff putting together our provisions for this 8-day trek didn’t want us to be protein deficient. So they gave us a generous amount of texturized vegetable protein (TVP), four jars of peanut butter, raw nuts, lentils, and tons of cheese! This was one reason our food rations were so dang heavy!
The second downside was we didn’t have particularly large appetites- and the high altitude was stealing whatever hunger we might otherwise have had back home. Each time we cooked a meal in our giant cooking pan with our copious amounts of rations, the three of us could barely finished half of it! That’s the other reason our pack weight was never getting lighter. We were essentially eating our leftover dinner for breakfast because there was just too much food!
THE WINDS ARE WINDY
Although the wind was helpful for keeping the bugs (mostly) at bay as we cooked dinner, there was a down side too. Our environment was a bit breezy when we first set up camp, but once the sun went down, the temperature dropped and wind really picked up.
Around 11 pm, the wind began to really blow like it was being channeled down Gannett Peak and roared through the valley. It had to be blowing 20-30 mph, with gust much higher, and there were times I was sure our main tent pole was going to collapse. I could barely sleep in fits and starts as I worried whether this dang tent was going to take off in the wind like a kite.
Our NOLS instructors must have known the high winds were a major threat at this high elevation campsite, because during our tent set-up they came around directing each team to put several massive boulders on each of our anchor points. I thought it was overkill in the moment, but apparently I was wrong.
When I got up at 4:35 am to empty my bladder, the wind was still gusting like mad. So took that moment to walk around the tent and tighten down each of the guy lines yet again. All of them were much looser than they’d been when we’d bedded down for the night, and the adjustment made our tent (slightly) quieter afterward. Yet it the sides of the tent still sounded like a giant sail snapping in the wind.
When I emerged for good a few hours later, the wind was finally dying down as the sun shone down on us. I surveyed my surroundings and saw that Emily and I clearly weren’t the only one who’d been struggling with our tent last night. The closest tent to us was listing quite a bit and was barely standing. Another one had collapsed entirely, and the two guys sleeping inside it just tucked the excess tent fabric around them and used it like a second bivy.
The Winds were windy indeed.
SNOW SKILLS
After breakfast, we all returned to out tents to grab our climbing gear – helmets, harnesses, ropes, ice axes, and crampons – in preparation for today’s “snow school.” The NOLS instructors didn’t call it that, but that’s the terms my guides on Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier used for our snow skills day, and that how it stuck in my mind.
For the next several hours, we used the steep snow-covered slopes above us to work on self-arrest skills, team travel on (and off) a rope team, working on our movement in crampons, and a myriad of other glacier climbing skills.
I was feeling rather confident with myself through all of it, as it felt like more of a refresher than learning from scratch. I’d successfully climbed Mt. Hood (Oregon’s highest peak) back in May of this year with a guide and two other female climbers.
Plus, I’d gone through a very similar full-day training session in June before my attempt on Mt. Rainier (Washington’s highest peak). That climb had been curtailed at 10,000 feet because a polar vortex rolled in. So, while we didn’t use our gear during the ascent up to Camp Muir, we did have to break out our crampons for about 1,500 vertical feet of descent thanks to the icy precipitation that accrued after our arrival.
I am still very much a novice when it comes to mountaineering, but at least I had some experience on this type of terrain. That was more than almost all the members of our group could boast, so we started our day with a crawl, walk, run approach to learning.
TIME TO REST
After four hours or working in the snow, we had a late lunch together then retreated to our respective tents to rest. Our goal for this afternoon was just to lay low from 3 pm to 10 pm so people could nap or conserve their energy in any way they could before tonight’s big climb.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any luck catching some zzzz’s. The sun was out, and it felt like a sauna inside our blue tent. It was just too warm and exposed at this elevation. And without the wind we had yesterday or overnight, the mosquitoes were back. So I just sat outside reading a book on my phone as I waited for dinner.
After dinner, we discussed our ascending route one last time. We could all see Gannett Peak’s snowy summit silhouetted against the cloudless blue sky. Tonight, we head through the terminal moraine and follow a boulder-strewn route up several miles until we reached the Dinwoody Glacier.
From there we’d rope up into our two teams and zigzag across the glacier on our way up to the Gooseneck Couloir. The couloir was one of the steepest and most technical parts of the climb, and we’d essentially be heading up a narrow chute leading toward the back side of the ridge. And if all that went well, we’d just follow the snowy ridge the remainder of the way to the summit.
It seemed like a straightforward enough plan, but I also knew the ascent was going to be hard. We had nearly 3,000 vertical feet to climb if we wanted to summit Wyoming’s highest mountain. And much of it was going to occur in the dark this evening and tomorrow morning.
After our route briefing and reminder of what gear we’d need to pack (and what we were leaving behind), it was back to the tent for another attempt to sleep. This second effort at rest was equally unsuccessful. I just lay there waiting for our wake up call at 10 pm. Despite all our preparations today, I was still a bundle of anticipation and nerves.
