A few days after we got back from our rock climbing course, we repacked and headed farther north to the backcountry of Whistler for an eight day mountaineering course. We had to pack food for eight days, along with crampons, ice axes, harnesses and helmets. Our packs weighed close to 50 pounds as we trekked across the mountains.
This was our first day out on a glacier. It was really sweet to be out on the glacier and the crampons let you walk pretty much anywhere, but I think I'm still more a fan of snow instead of ice.
The glaceirs are huge! It made us feel so small as we crossed them. Especially after we reached a ridge or summit and we could look back across at it. Some parts that we had to climb were crazy steep also.
We stopped to do a bit of climbing before the sun hit the ice. It was pretty fun to climb up the ice. A lot like rock climbing except there are holds everywhere because I could just make them with my axe or crampons.
We had the best weather for our entire trip. It was clear blue skies like this for 8 days. We all have wicked sunglass tans now!
There are lots of areas on the glaciers that are like this, full of crevasses and we just had to zig zag back and forth to find a way across. Right here we were tring to get back onto a ridge that was probably 1/4 mile away but we walked almost a mile by the time we found a way through. At some points we had to climb down into the crevasses and back up the other side.
This is the bottom of the glacier that we crossed. You can kind of see the lake, in the middle left of this picture, its where our tents were set up for camp for 3 nights before we started our traverse.
This is the rest of the Alpine track that I'm in.
Heading up the top portion of the glacier. We had to be roped in because of the crevasses we just crossed and it got really steep ahead of us, where you can kind of see the other group.
Some gourmet backcountry cooking!
And again, just cause it looked so good.
This is the bottom of the glacier that we crossed. You can kind of see the lake, in the middle left of this picture, its where our tents were set up for camp for 3 nights before we started our traverse.
This is the rest of the Alpine track that I'm in.
Heading up the top portion of the glacier. We had to be roped in because of the crevasses we just crossed and it got really steep ahead of us, where you can kind of see the other group.
Some gourmet backcountry cooking!
And again, just cause it looked so good. And I can't figure out how to get rid of this second picture.
We just summited this mountain earlier that day. We climbed along the bottom edge of that snow slab to get up to the ridge. It wasn't quite as steep as this picture makes it look, but it was definetly steep! I got a bit nervous going up, but mostly because I was thinking of how we would get back down. Below the snow is all scree slope so we pretty much just skied back down in our boots. It wasn't too bad and it was really sweet to be up at the summit. Its just over 8,000 feet.
This was a sunrise from our camp.
On our traverse, there were so many slopes that we had to cross like this. They were super steep and all loose boulders. It was pretty rough going, especially with a huge heavy back. Our knees and ankles were getting pretty beat up by the end of the trip. Ibuprofen and Tylenol were part of our breakfasts for the last few mornings.
This was from camp our last night. We were up on a ridge at 7,000 feet. Completely exposed. It felt like we slept through a hurricane because the wind was so strong all night. It was our coldest night out and we woke up to frost on our packs tents.
This is my group, with our two guides on our way out. We all smelled pretty bad after 8 days. And I am totally fine if I never have to eat oat meal again!
We just summited this mountain earlier that day. We climbed along the bottom edge of that snow slab to get up to the ridge. It wasn't quite as steep as this picture makes it look, but it was definetly steep! I got a bit nervous going up, but mostly because I was thinking of how we would get back down. Below the snow is all scree slope so we pretty much just skied back down in our boots. It wasn't too bad and it was really sweet to be up at the summit. Its just over 8,000 feet.
This was a sunrise from our camp.
On our traverse, there were so many slopes that we had to cross like this. They were super steep and all loose boulders. It was pretty rough going, especially with a huge heavy back. Our knees and ankles were getting pretty beat up by the end of the trip. Ibuprofen and Tylenol were part of our breakfasts for the last few mornings.
This was from camp our last night. We were up on a ridge at 7,000 feet. Completely exposed. It felt like we slept through a hurricane because the wind was so strong all night. It was our coldest night out and we woke up to frost on our packs tents. 
This is my group, with our two guides on our way out. We all smelled pretty bad after 8 days. And I am totally fine if I never have to eat oat meal again!
