Laura is a doctor, but she hates her job and wanted a career change, she had been guided by RMI up Ranier.
Evan is an excellent skiier from MT but he is deathly afraid of heights.
Douval is a father in his 50’s he too had been with RMI on Ranier.
Brett the nomadic mountain guide started out as a ski guide but eventually moved into climbing and also guides rock and other alpine peaks.

Douval a medical equipment monger from SC

Our strong and quiet guide Brett

We get on some easy top rope routes and practice our knots, belay, climbing, and rappelling skills. I know the knots and techniques already, but Its good to review and help the rest of the class remember the methods.

We establish a comfortable Low Camp(see above map).

I learn a new skill.  Brett calls it a boot box. Its where you dig a hole under your tents vestibule storage space for your feet so you can cook and sit in your tent at the same time.

Day 3 . Brett the instructor tells us that since bad weather is moving in we are going to cover basic crampon ax and rope team procedures and make for high camp than summit the day after.  THEN we learn more skills. This sounds completely backwards to me, but I can’t turn down the chance to make a big summit on this trip.

Next we learned how to tie into part of a rope team, and mainly how not to trip on the ropes tied between each member of the party. Brett said it was to help protect against falling into a crevasses in the glacier and we would learn more about that later.

The group is taught several ways to use our crampons, I was already familiar with the basic flat foot and front point techniques from ice climbing, but we learn a bit more about it.

Flat foot technique requires all points to contact the ground for more security.

 We then established a cramped little high camp. The skies were clear and the air was hot. Winds blew in from the sea incredibly strongly. A storm was coming.

A calm evening before the alpine start.

Day 4. Alpine start. I have a love hate relationship with getting up at 3am. I zipped open the sleeping bag and got the stove going and put a pot of coffee on before rolling back into bed for about 10 minutes. The sound of the Svea rumbling is music to my tired ears.

Other than the slog and the difficulty of breathing our team made it up to the summit in beautiful weather.

I had been saving pieces of Kendal’s Mint Cake, which had been snacked upon the summit of Everest by Hillary. Baker is no Everest, but you have to start somewhere. Cheer’s to my Oklahomie Chris Stoval for introducing me to this snack.

Day 5. I woke to the wonderful sound of rain pattering on our tent. At around 8am Brett came and told us through our tent fly, that lessons were to be postponed today due to the rain.

The entire morning and afternoon was spent lounging in the tent, cooking, making tea and coca and Laura and I exchanged stories from our college days about pre-med. We really got a chance to bond and I thought our backgrounds of attempting to get into the medical track were very similar. She wanted to get into politics instead of doctoring. Laura remembered she had brought her Kindle and read aloud the first few chapters for Game of Thrones. She had never watched the show but got the book to know what everyone was talking about.

I love the sound of rain on a silnylon fly. So listen with me.

A good tentie dosen’t smell too bad, a GREAT tentie reads you Game of Thrones with accents.

While I won’t see the rest of the crew again for a while, Evan the acrophobic mountaineer and I would set our sights on Ranier that next week.

The wet conditions caused a condition known as glopping which severely affected our group’s Kifaru sled. Since the sled was not waxed and well maintained it glopped every 100 yards of uphill progress. About a 4 inch cake of wet snow built up under it and it had to be overturned and scrapped. The only remedy would be to fully dry the bottom of the fiberglass sled, than spray on wax and let that cure for a few minutes. No one had brought wax or was patient enough to dry the sled. So our progress consisted of dragging the 80 lbs sled a hundred yards than scrapping it clear and repeating. It took all 4 of us our best effort to get that thing to our Quinzee village.

Here Vic is supervising the drag, and providing helpful comments like “That sled is probably too heavy.”

I had though that the digging of the quinzee was enough hard manual labor, but I was mistaken. After we had hauled our sled 5 miles to high camp. We had to excavate the monstrous snow pile that all 15 of us had created the week before.

Brady inside a nice cave.

Since it was much warmer this week than last digging into the pile was wet drippy, soaking work. About 8 hours later a bit before dinner it took the 4 of us all day to dig it out but it was done.

Me, Emily, Donald, and Phil. A job well done.

We move our gear inside and find out there is actually room for 6 people. We had done too good a job. Phil had gotten the most soaked of all of us from sweat and was starting to shiver uncontrollably in his wet layers.

We boiled water over these little lanterns!

It was so warm inside after I light up the fire. We hung our clothes up to dry them on our avalanche rescue probes, and many of them were dry in the morning. The 12 oz of bacon fat I brought was about just enough for the weekend to light fires after dark inside our huge quinzee.

Normally a Quinzee is about 32* exactly inside if it is built right to keep out the draft. With the warm fires going inside and the outside temperatures rising, it actually melted a big hole in our snow palace. Boo.

Lucky for us it was our last night. The weather was getting warmer and warmer yet it was dumping wet snow flakes on us.

Our second kitchen was much less elaborate than the first. It was a simple pit with counters and cubbies on the sides no seats and benches this time round. Kitchen liquid waste was dumped into a sump pit in the corner.

Frozen eggs for breakfast. Some one forgot to keep them inside the Quinzee.

• A quinzee will never beat a nice stove heated tent. A candle and quilliqs are better than nothing but not better than a nice wood stove. A wood stove is a luxury that can be had in woodland winter camping, but if we were to go on an alpine trip or out into the arctic circle nothing or a simple quilliq is all that we may get.
• Skiing downhill with a sled even in green treed glades makes for quite the adventure. 
• Bacon and cosmic brownies rule.
• Always keep snacks on hand at all times, even in bed.
• We used about 8 oz of fuel per person per day each weekend to melt snow and cook. Thats a bit under a liter per person that weekend.
• Most importantly, if its warm out don’t light the qulliq up all night and melt your shelter.