Since getting back from my recent trip to Ecuador, I’ve been thinking a lot about ice. Why?! You are dying to know. When I said here that I was eager to travel outside of Quito, that was only the half of it. The reason I was in Quito at all was because I had booked a nine-day mountaineering course with American Alpine Institute.
“Mountaineering” (loosely defined as “the sport of activity of climbing mountains”) generally becomes rather intertwined with ice-carved features.
On this particular trip we had:
–An ice “chunk” the size of a VW Bug come pounding into our glacier training site, literally chasing one of the participants down the slope until it crashed and cracked into several smaller, refrigerator-sized chunks.
–A two-hour navigation through a crevasse field I fondly came to think of as “terra infirma”, which mostly consisted of a guide pulling on the rope that connected us and calling out, “Don’t fall into that crevasse!” Good times.
–A member of the climbing party falling in a crevasse up to his shoulders. (Note: this is actually not a “big deal” in mountaineering, though it feels like a significantly big deal while it is happening.)
So, anyway, the point is:
Ice nightmares thoughts dominated a special place in my heart while we were up in the mountains. My ponderings about the ice we were standing on, it’s ability to crumble apart, it’s ability to hold our weight, it’s increasingly worrisome relationship with the sun, were often dovetailed by a single question:
Why am I doing this?
Out of all the fun, engaging hobbies in the world, why am I drawn to this one? What happened to my deep-seated love of knitting? (True story. I lived in Maine for a winter during high school, if there was ever a time and place to fall in love with knitting, it was December of 1999, before cell service had hit Downeast).
Please note as I provide my unsolicited answer–I am not a mountaineering expert. If you want to hear from a mountaineering expert, I would direct you here or here or here. But I did have a significant time to consider my opinions (and a very real desire to distract myself from thinking about the climate change/melting ice situation). Here’s what I came up with:
The Difference Between Why I Like Mountaineering and Why I Go Mountaineering
I like mountaineering because I enjoy doing things that challenge me, it offers a chance to get away from my generally screen-dominated life, I meet new people, obsessive training regimes and research binges suit my personality and I get bored on other types of vacations (except the beach. Love the beach.)
But I think I go mountaineering for the same reason I read books or talk to people: to learn stuff. Sometimes I learn great stuff about myself. For example: The first part of me that gets cold is the little finger on my left hand. Also-I’m scared of horses! Who knew? And it turns out I’m pretty good at Monopoly Deal, but probably too nice to ever be a real champion.
Also, I filter lots of interesting information about the world around me. Some examples from January:
What I Learned In January
Diamox makes your hands tingle…
In Spanish, the abbreviation for meters above sea level in Spanish is s.n.m. (sobre el nivel del mar)…
It is hard to balance an egg on the head of a nail on the equator (though arguably-it’s hard to balance an egg on the head of a nail anywhere)…
Hummingbirds have long tongues that flick out of their beaks to collect nectar from flowers (also they are very hard to photograph. I recommend slow motion video).
And I learned lots about ice! The most interesting thing: at the top of every glacier there is an especially terrifying kind of crevasse called a bergschrund, which is formed at the glacier is pulling away from the ice or mountain above.
Summit ice picture from the top of Cayambe below!
Banner Photo Credit: Sergei Akulich