Learning the Basics
Washington
by John England
As a child my greatest passion in life was the outdoors. Each year my father would take me camping and rock climbing from spring until fall. When I got to college, a busy school schedule and work kept me from getting outdoors as much as I wanted. But on clear, cold winter days I would frequently peek out my window on campus and see Mountain Rainier looming in the distance. I couldn’t help but ask myself what it would be like to hike in the snow. Finally I decided to find out. It seemed to me that the best way to experience the outdoors in the wintertime, which is considerably more dangerous than doing the same in any other season, would be to go with people who had experience. After a quick Google search I found a Seattle based organization called The Mountaineers that offers courses in everything from mountain climbing to kayaking.
I like to explore new places. It’s ironic, however, that I have the worst sense of direction out of anyone I know. Maybe it’s because I spend too much time looking at the minutiae of the environment I’m in. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. At any rate, the navigation course offered by The Mountaineers Club seemed like a good place to start. The course consisted of a lecture to discuss topics in the required reading – a book about how to read maps and use a compass – and a day in the mountains to practice our new skills. Coming from Seattle and having at best a rudimentary understanding of this thing called snow, as well as running on a college student’s budget, I arrived for the trip unprepared. Others in the group had brought high-tech REI gear, including neat little boot covers called gators that stop snow from leaking into your boots – an essential for winter travel, I would find out later. At the onset of our walk I felt a little shabby in my wool sweater and wool pants, both circa 1960, that I had borrowed from my father, but I was determined to have a good time.
We hiked into the mountains at Heybrook Ridge off of Highway 2 for about two hours before we reached a relatively clear field lined by dense evergreens. We were each handed a set of coordinates and instructed to find them using our compasses and about forty of us began hacking a way through the snow, trees and streams that we came across. After an hour and a half of falling into hidden pockets of snow covered branches, I reached a clearing and discovered that I was right on the mark. Of course, not having the right gear, I was soaked all the way through, especially my feet. But the experience was worth a little discomfort and I found that navigating in the wilderness wasn’t so hard after all. We hiked back and turned in for the day. I returned home tired but excited and I knew that the following year I would enroll in The Mountaineers snow shoeing course, this time with better gear.
And I did. The course consisted of a series of three lectures about safety and avalanche awareness and two fieldtrips. The first fieldtrip covered beginner topics like the basics of walking in snowshoes, emergency survival in the wild, avalanche recovery using beacons, which are small radio transmitters, and self arrest, a technique in which an individual that has fallen on a slope can stop themselves using their ice axe. The second fieldtrip involved an actual snow shoeing excursion during which time we would have to practice our newly learned skills.
Carrying a pack full of gear and walking up hill in snow shoes can be tiring, but there are techniques a person can use to lessen the strain. One of the guides starts as the trail blazer who cuts a path through the snow by taking a step and then stepping down again to compact the snow. This person works harder than anyone else in the group, and after about fifteen minutes they usually rotate with another person who takes the lead. The result is that no one becomes especially tired, and the remaining people in the back have a precut trail to follow. Additionally, when snow shoeing, it’s a good idea to take a step and then let all of the weight rest on your back foot slightly longer than you normally would as you bring your front foot forward. This is, of course, what a person normally does when walking, but in deep snow walking is not quite so easy, and by letting one leg rest, even if momentarily, the person snow shoeing tires out less easily. This extra half second of rest per step doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up over a four hour adventure. And even though snow shoeing is hard work, it doesn’t exactly feel that way when you’re breathing clean mountain air and are surround by beautiful landscapes covered with snowy trees.
After lingering at the top for lunch, our group descended back to the parking lot. Our lead guide John said a few words about how well we had done and about how he hoped to see us again in the future. He concluded the course with one of the best pieces of advice anyone has ever given me: “Now you know just enough to get yourself in serious trouble.” What he meant was, winter travel, like any sport, takes time and practice to get good at. Even if know the basics, you can still get carried away and find yourself in trouble, either by avalanche or over-exertion. I’m not an expert yet, but I’m hooked, and you can bet that I’ll be back in the mountains come winter.
