A unique training opportunity presented itself to practice glacier travel and crevasse rescue skills on Mt Hood’s White River Glacier with the Santiam Alpine Club and I was happy to take advantage of the practice. I didn’t bring my board along for the trip, but wished I would have after seeing the lower glacier, where there was ample room to make turns. Crevasse rescue skills are valuable to know and essential to practice, but I hope to avoid having to use them in real life. A group of about 8 of us set out from the climbers lot at Timberline Lodge around 7:30am in the morning and started hiking along the dirt trail leading up the mountain to the White River Glacier.

After spending most of the day practicing the systems, we unroped and hiked across the glacier to take in the views and relax. The east side of the glacier was relatively flat, and in one spot there was quite a bit of meltwater running down the surface in a cool little channel.

From our spot on the east side of the glacier, we had a good view back across to the crevasse we were practicing on. You can see the gear we left by the lip in the below picture…

After taking some photos, we hiked back to our gear and decided to load up and head back to the parking lot. On the way down, I watched numerous boulders tumble from the ridge as we were hiking (not being kicked loose by our party) and rocket down into the canyon. They would have easily killed a person if they struck them had anyone been down there – a good reminder to pick a safe route and always be wary of rockfall. Once back at the parking lot around 4:30pm or so, we loaded up and drove down to Government Camp, stopping at the Ice Ax Grill for some micro-brews. It was the perfect ending to a long but worthwhile day!
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