Ropes on the slopes

Third in a series: This week, 30-year-old Maryanne Gaddy, an aspiring recreational climber, offers an inside look at the “snow practice” session, one of the highlights in the annual 14-week-long Mountain School offered by the Spokane Mountaineers. The club is celebrating its 90th anniversary.

I’ve never before set off with five near strangers, only to decide within a day that if I were ever lost on a mountaintop, they’re the ones I’d want by my side.

Of course, the point is not to get lost in the first place.

On the first morning of snow practice, I and my teammates for the weekend, Valerie Wade, Nik Reed and Mike Billings, arose at 4 a.m. and headed into the sunrise for our adventure near the Idaho-Montana border. A weekend near Stevens Lakes with 30 other newbie mountaineers would be spent learning essential snow skills as part of the Spokane Mountaineers’ comprehensive Mountain School.

We met up with our team’s instructors, Lloyd Hixson and John Stucke, at the trailhead and set off. After an hour of forest hiking we came upon the most difficult portion of the morning’s ascent: a steep, prolonged headwall up to the lake. Others had gone before us and installed a staircase for us to follow up the hill. When hiking in the snow, the leaders kick steps into the snow, and with a little care, everyone who follows can use the steps, greatly easing the effort needed.

I wasn’t used to a heavy pack, and had only eaten a handful of taffy for breakfast. A few miles up the trail, I was feeling a little weak and tired, when from behind me Billings suddenly began whistling the “Wizard of Oz” theme song.

The only words I could remember were, “If I only had a brain!” How fitting. It cracked me up. With a few notes, it felt like Billings had lifted the pack from my shoulders and filled me with energy. It was that easy. The game was on.

After setting up camp within view of a frozen, alpine lake, and gobbling a hasty lunch, we ascended yet another slope to learn the critical art of self arrest. A mere slip or stumble on an ice-encrusted slope could become deadly if a person begins to slide out of control. When wearing crampons on your boots, the instinct is to use them to stop yourself, but if they come down and catch, you could break your ankles, begin to tumble, and possibly end up a sodden heap of flesh and broken bone at the bottom of the slope.

No fun in that.

The proper technique when sliding out of control down a slope is to roll over onto your ice ax and, while keeping the blade a few inches from your face, drag the pick into the snow, all the while keeping your feet up.

Self arrest turned out to be one of the most exciting things we practiced all weekend. It’s kind of like entering a luge event without the sled. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can fling yourself down the slope headfirst on your back.

Feeling adventurous, Reed even held off until he built up some serious head-first speed before twisting around, getting the ax under his body, swinging his legs downhill and coming to a stop.

Fifty overgrown kids laughed and shouted their way up and down the slope. Darkening skies didn’t stop us. Smatterings of rain didn’t stop us.

But a sheet of lightning accompanied by a simultaneous crash of thunder sent us swarming off the mountain. Luckily, we were all expert sliders by that point, so we simply dropped onto our bums and slid, or glissaded, to the bottom and ran for our tents.

After such a strenuous day, we sat around and ate for an hour and a half, everyone sharing snacks and chipping in portions for the hapless instructor who forgot his food. An impromptu 30th birthday party for Wade finished off the night. We mis-measured the water for her instant cake-in-a-bag, so she had to drink her raspberry crumble.

But she’ll definitely remember her 30th.

Huge cornices had built up on Stevens Peak, where we had planned to climb for practice as a final note for the weekend. Warm weather and rain made some slopes unstable and dangerous. An avalanche had come down one large, steep slope during the night.

However, while we were practicing team rope travel about midday, a team of experienced climbers had found a safe route to the top. The climb was on.

Our team tied into a rope about 20 feet apart. We followed a switchback route up to a ridge, then on toward the peak. Gradually, our group coordination improved and we began to move in lockstep. We became aware of one another through tension and slack on the rope in our hands and began to automatically adjust our speed to accommodate everyone in the group.

When we got into the flow, the climbing sometimes seemed effortless.

Our lessons paid off when a team member slid off an outcropping, but the rope came taut and the slide was stopped as everyone else immediately dropped into self arrest positions exactly as we had practiced that morning. The quick reactions by the entire rope team were comforting.

While traversing the safe route up the ridge, an avalanche swept down the adjacent valley. Massive boulders of snow were eerily silent as they careened down the slope. Even though we were well out of harm’s way, the power of it from that close range was stunning.

Moments later, as we neared the steep summit approach, Wade, piped up behind me, “I’m so happy I get to do this on my birthday!”

No one replied, but that random comment by a friend completely lifted my mood, and I headed to the top with a grin on my face and never for a second doubted that all of us would make it.

We passed every test that weekend. We learned how to stop a slide in the snow, and that when thunder and lightning hit simultaneously, you get the hell off the mountain.

We learned how to turn when roped together and how to reverse 30 minutes of climbing with a thrilling 30 seconds of glissading to the bottom on our backsides.

Most importantly, we learned to move as a team, to pick each other up with a word and to trust each other with flying ice axes in our hands.

I had always thought of mountaineering as an intensely individual sport. After all, you take every single step yourself. But when you have a team that makes you laugh when you really want to kneel down and cry, every step is so much easier.