By Cloudveil Mountain Ambassador Cait Parker

Northern Ice Field

It always amazes me how easy it is to forget the trying moments, or at least how muted the memory can become. It is an incredible adaptation. It allows us to continue. It allows us to try again. For this reason, as I sit here in the warmth of a Buenos Aires morning sipping my Dark Cherry Mocha Frappaccino I can actually consider another attempt to climb a remote mountain on Patagonia’s Northern Ice Field. Maybe the comfort of the padded sofa or the boost of caffeine and sugar entering my system is skewing my perspective. But here, basking in the aura of relaxation and holiday cheer, the lessons I learned from the hardships of enduring a Patagonian storm seem more like aces in my pocket.

In a chapter entitled “Tent Bound” from Jon Krakaur’s book Eiger Dreams, Krakaur warns that if you don’t want to become “tent bound” you should avoid Patagonia altogether. Known for fast-changing, severe weather systems, the ice fields, in particular, should be treated with caution and careful preparation. As fate would have it, we were in Patagonia, on the northern ice field and we became tent bound …

We were a small city. With fourteen students and our team of four instructors, we had five tents to manage on top of gear, food, and bathrooms. It took us three days moving 48 km to ferry loads to the final camp below our objective, Mt. Hyades. For three days we had the perfect weather window to set ourselves up. We couldn’t believe our luck. We spent nights running through ideas for what we would do after we attempted Hyades. It’s silly to think back on those conversations now. At that point we didn’t know that we had used up all of our blue bird days. On the night of that third moving day, the storm moved in.

We thought that it was Thanksgiving. (It wasn’t.) November 17th. 3rd Thursday. I couldn’t help thinking at 10:30 pm that the combination of pasta, bulgur, cheese, butter and soup mix in my bowl looked like some sort of T-day stuffing. We had been digging for two hours and our tent platform was just coming together. Winds were increasing steadily and seemed to be hitting us from all directions. The mountains to our north were helping to protect us from the prevailing system, but our position at a high elevation and in a constriction created its own wind patterns. By midnight we had the tent set up and were beginning to empty our sleeping pads and bags into it. Our snow wall was two blocks deep (3 feet thick) and eight feet high surrounding our tent on three sides. Students had used a similar design. It had been a 20-hour day and we were ready for sleep. Tucked into our sleeping bags with the wind roaring high over the passes and our wall holding strong, we snuggled up for the night.

Just after midnight the precipitation began. Then the digging rotations began. It went on for three days. The walls helped all the tents avoid some of the snowdrift for the first two days. We all worked hard to keep the walls and tent platforms in good shape. We had some issues with contamination of our water source as stressed out students were trying to figure out how to manage basic needs, such as going to the bathroom. This knocked two people out of the picture with GI issues. Those tents were left a person down for shoveling. On the third day, those two tents couldn’t keep up with the snowdrift and their tents were getting buried despite help from other expedition members. We decided to collapse the two tents. We split the group into three tents of six for that third night. When I woke up to shovel at 11:30 pm that night, the snow and wind were calming down. I still had a good hour of work to shovel the platform clear, but no one else would need to wake up to shovel that night.

The morning of the fourth day the sun shone down on us. We were elated. We quickly hung our things out to dry (sleeping bags, waterproof layers, gloves, puffy coats…etc). It was a small gift and we couldn’t have been happier. We used that day to review some      things that the group learned from the experience. Many of the students said that it was the most intense experience of their lives. We talked through some of their systems and we spent the day establishing a new perimeter and building new platforms. Again, that night the wind and precipitation began. By the time our new platforms were nearing completion at 11:15 pm we knew that we were in for something else.

The next two days we were able to continue with some teaching and skills practice outside between shoveling shifts. At times the snow was almost pleasant. At other times, we were worried about students becoming disoriented just leaving the tent. We lived fluctuating between these extremes; sucker holes to 100 mph winds. The team performed admirably. We were impressed with their persistence and courage throughout the whole experience. They understood that hard work was necessary and that there was no easy way out. We had to maintain camp as best we could and we had to wait.

By the fourth day of the second system, the storm was gaining on us. Two student tent platforms and our own had snowdrifts level with the walls around the tents despite digging them out a few times. We couldn’t keep up. Our tent sites were essentially big holes for collecting blowing snow. The student tents were collapsed early that morning. Ours was collapsed a few hours later. The students were sleeping 14 people between two tents. We had decided to move into a snow cave. We weren’t in the best location for caves and with the drifting snow we didn’t know how much better it would be. We were worried about how much effort it might take to stay unburied. Though, life couldn’t get any wetter and we knew how to work hard, so we decided to give it a try. Plus, after a week and a half of little sleep, we were looking forward to the calm and quiet of a snow cave.

By midday the campsite was maintainable. With 7 students available for shoveling each tent and us working on upgrades to our snow shelter, the storm was manageable. We placed bamboo wands along the most direct paths between tents and the bathroom so that everyone could be easily found even without visibility and in strong winds and precipitation. The students were beginning to ask about getting out of there. The storm was wearing on all of us, but it would be a huge endeavor to move a group of 18 people off the glacier in these conditions. It just wasn’t feasible. As long as we had food and able bodies, we were staying put. We would wait for a window to move.

The next morning we got a window. The wind and precipitation had died down. We still had no visibility, but we had the tools to navigate in a whiteout. We were moving over terrain we knew and we wanted to get out if we had the opportunity. We didn’t know when we would get another one. It took 5 hours once we got the ball rolling to have everyone ready to leave. The process included unburying everything, melting water and cooking breakfast, rotating packing inside of tents, de-thawing backpacks and glacier rigs, setting waypoints on the GPS, talking through our management strategies for the move, digging out and breaking down tents, rigging sleds to haul waste, tying everyone in to frozen ropes, and double checking everything. At 1:15 pm we were on the move. Eight hours and 18 km later we were cold, tired, and soaked, but we had made it off.

There were some recovery days following our flight from the glacier. The storm lasted two more full days and finally broke on the 12th day since the first night that we settled in below Hyades. Moving away from the glacier felt nothing short of a blessing. The Northern Ice Field had flexed a few of its, in all likelihood, smaller muscles and we worked hard to just barely keep up. However, we walked away with lessons and skills that can only be learned from such a harsh teacher.

Now that I am comfy and warm and enjoying the holidays, I can happily think back to the already cheerier memory of that ice field. I can forget a little bit about the hour of shoveling it took before my hands warmed up in my frozen gloves. I can choose not to remember the nauseous anticipation of waking up at 3:00 am to climb out of the warmth of my sleeping bag. I won’t dwell on the particulars of unwrapping a snow-covered ball of frozen rain gear. I can think past those details. I am ready to reflect on the bigger ideas, the lessons-learned. It is the respect that is now instilled in me for the Northern Ice Field that I will think about, that will always be with me, never diminishing or fading. That touched something deeper; a layer that is not so easily shed. I will always carry it with me, just as I carry so many other experiences. It will factor into the decisions I make. It will remind me to have humility in the mountains.