T-1: Recap

Today, it was a good day.  Climb school was a lot of fun.   We huddled around 8:15am, did a quick gear check and a little chat with the Jake, our guide.   He recommended us to just wear one layer of upper and lower body, since the weather seems to warm up.   We met the second guide for our team, Erik Nelson and we were heading out to Paradise at 8:30am.

We walked for about an hour to our climb school location and during the climb, we learned about a proper rest-step and pressure breathing, which are vital for a successful climb.   We also learned about the pace that we are going to use during the entire climb as well as walking with our ice axe.    Ice axe need to be on the uphill side and needed for a balance point when you walk at the upper mountain.

We also learned some uphill walking technique, such as duck-walking, and cross-over and some downhill walking such as plunge and boot skiing.    It’s amazing a little thing that you do can increase the efficiency of your walk and preserve your energy!

Then we got to the fun part.   How to self-arrest and team-arrest during unfortunate situation such as, well, hope this never happen to me, but falling to the crevasse or if someone on your rope team fall into the crevasse.    We hiked up to the top of the hill and slide on our back and our stomach facing down, and try to stop ourselves.    I’ve been through this climb school before, 6 years ago, and this is like a refresher course.  I even learned some new technique!

Last part of the climb school are crampon and walking with rope.   We learned on how to put our crampon and how to walk in crampon.   Different efficiency technique and every little energy you can save up, you will most likely have a successful climb.

We were done around 3pm and headed back to RMI basecamp.    John and I were busy getting our gear ready again for the next day.   Some of our gear were wet (that’s what happened when you slide a lot in the snow).

The highlight for today is meeting Lou Whittaker.   I adore Lou.   He is a mountaineering legend.   He gave us some wisdom, more tips and tricks and share some awesome stories.   You know there’s a lot of stories when he was guiding people to the mountain since 1962!

We wrapped up our session around 8pm and call it a night.     John and I were back in our room, and getting our gear packed.   The plan is to meet the rest of my team at 9:15am tomorrow, at Paradise.

I’m pumped.   I’m so ready.   I am as ready as I can be.   Fifteen weeks of training are to prepare me the next two days.

T-1: Climb for Clean Air

Another day closer to my climb day!   Today’s agenda is climb school and a fire pit chat with Lou Whittaker.   For some reason I thought we were doing the fire pit chat yesterday with Lou, but it is tonight at 7pm.   Yesterday we were only meeting our lead guide.   During climb school,   we are going to learn different techniques that will save us our lives in the event of unfortunate situation, fine tuning the technique of things that we are already know, such as breathing and walking.   Learn how to self-arrest (just in case you fall) and team arrest (just in case your team member fall), walk on with crampon, walk with ropes and all other cool mountaineering techniques that will needed for this climb.

My pack will be a wee bit lighter since the equipment list for climb school are not as much as the climb day.   We are going to huddle at 8:15am and be at Paradise at 9:30am.   We will be out and about until 3pm.

As I am writing this post, it is raining outside.   Not pouring, but sprinkle rain and a little bit of wind.    It’s not a new thing for Seattle resident since that’s pretty much how our weather all year.   Hopefully, wind stay the same and the rain will not get any harder.

Well, I better eat my breakfast and head out.    Thank you for your emails/tweets!  Keep them coming, since I might need a little encouragement later when I come back from the climb school – super tired, wet and cold and question myself on why in the world I am doing this.

Lots of love.