Video
Glacier Travel Safety
Transcript
Hello. Welcome to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. My name is, Elizabeth Schafer, and I'm a general ranger here. Behind me, you can see the white ice of the group glacier coming down the valley. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about what you need to do to be prepared to take a hike on the glacier surface.
[RAGTIME MUSIC]
You should have some basic things in your backpack before heading out. Always carry multiple layers for changing temperatures. You should have a rain jacket for a wind layer or rain. Another important piece of gear would be gloves for your hands.
Gloves will protect you not only from the cold but in case you trip and fall on the rough surface of the glacier to protect your hand from injury. Some people really like to have tracking polls as they will hike. And so that's also another good idea.
The most important piece of gear that you need to bring with you though, are your crampons. The National Park Service highly recommends that you bring crampons to hike on the glacier. You need to supply your own and bring them with you.
The surface of the glacier here at lower elevations is snow-free. That means, when you're out on the glacier, you're walking straight on ice. Crampons will help you get a good purchase into the ice surface to make sure that you do not slip or fall as you are traversing the route, finding your ways up and down the valleys on the surface of the ice.
When hiking on the glacier, you will find the surface of the ice, particularly after a row of sunny days, to be almost Styrofoam-like in its consistency. It'll be crumbly and easy to get a purchase in with your crampons. If you're out there right after a hard rain, you'll find that the ice is a hard glue. And it's much harder to stick your crampons into it, and it's a lot more slick.
[WIND BLOWING]
Now, we got our crampons out. We want to make sure we got the left foot and right foot set up correctly. You're going to put your heel in and then your toe in. And wrap the toe piece around your foot and your heel up. You take the webbing-- it should be on the outside of your foot-- and run it through the toe piece, and back to the inside, and loop it through.
You're now going to take the webbing across your instep and back over your buckle, which is on the outside of your foot. My crampon has a double D ring. You're going to bring it through both Ds, snug it up, then I'm going to weave it back through one D. You're going to want to get it good and snug in the knee to get the slack out of your webbing and tighten it up.
Now, you've got this long tail. You want to make sure it's tucked in well so that you don't have a tripping hazard while you're out on the ice. If it's long enough, you can bring it all the way around and tie it in. Mine is too short, so I'm just going to weave it through in the webbing on my toe and get that loose end out of my way.
Now, that foot feels good. Put the second one on. All right, so we've got our crampons on now, and we're all ready to go. Everybody's got their gloves.
When you're hiking on the glacier, it's easy to trip. And so wearing your gloves is good for the cold, but good for-- if you ended up landing on this nasty ice and you don't want to cut your hands up. So gloves are good for that.
All right, tracking polls are going to makes you feel more comfortable. They can help keep you stable, keep you from tripping. And I talk about tripping you're, like, not going to trip.
Oh, you might. You have crampons on your feet. You've just added an inch and 1/2 of spikes on the bottom of your foot.
So your first things you need to remember is you're going to have to pick your foot up higher when you walk than you might normally. When I walk, I tend to drag my heels. Some people drag their toes.
You're going to be conscious of lifting your feet up so that you don't catch the points. You're also going to be conscious of not walking too close together because if you walk-- pull your feet right next to each other, you've got a big chance of hooking your pants, or your straps, or something. So you want to consciously have your feet wider apart, and model that. Walking with your knees up, so you're-- and I'm exaggerating now, but it'll be more natural as we get going.
While walking on the glacier, there are some techniques to help you have a better time. You want to make sure that you're walking with your feet wide apart so that you do not trip yourself by catching your crampon's spikes into your pant legs. You also want to make sure that you lift your feet up high enough off the ground so that you aren't catching your spikes on the ice surface that you're walking on.
When you're heading up a hill, it is best to walk in a duck-walk fashion having your feet turned out, feet wide apart, and walking up the hill in small steps, kind of like a duck would. Your center of gravity will probably fall back, and you'll be in a slight squat. That is the same idea that you want to use for coming down a steep hill. So part of your gravity is lower, your feet are wide apart, then your feet are pointed out. Small steps to duck-walk down the hill.
So when we walk up a slope, or if you're walking up a steep mountainside, people tend to go onto the balls of their foot and just use part of their foot to climb up those rock or dirt slope. In crampons, we want all of our points in the ice at all times. That's what's giving us our support and our stability. So even if we're going up something steep or coming back down something steep, all points are in the ice, not just on the toe or just the heel. So even if you're side toeing, you might have to bend your legs a little weird.
So we're going to walk up this hill. And the process of walking up a steep hill or back down is to duck-walk. You have your feet wide apart at an angle, you might drop your hips a little bit depending on how steep it is to have your body weight over your feet, but just gonna walk up the hill in an exaggerated moment.
So I got my tracking polls for stability, and we're going to head up the hill. You're all ready? All right. Feel good?
All right. So when you go down a hill, same idea. Sometimes, well listen, this slope isn't so steep. I will practice the technique here, so if you're in a steeper slope it makes sense. You're going to walk down the hill, same duck-walk but you have to drop your hips so that your weight is here. So on a super-steep hill it'll give you a lot of stability, but that's how you want to walk down the hill. So the same duck-walk, all points in, and back down.
While traveling on the glacier, it's important to remember you only do one thing at a time. There is no multitasking on the glacier. We're not taking pictures and walking.
We're not drinking out of our water bottles and walking. No multitasking. It's easy to trip.
So if you're walking, you're paying attention to what you're doing. If you need to drink some water, you want to take a picture, you're going to stop. You're going to take your picture and put in your pocket, and then you're going to walk. So no multitasking on the glacier, OK?
Awesome. You want to be careful of the features that are out there on ice. There are crevasses, moulins, and steep-sided walls and valleys. You need to be careful by picking up your feet so that you do not trip, staying away from steep edges. And if you want to get close to take a look at things, be very conscious of what you are doing, give yourself plenty of distance, be conscious of your body weight, and how you're placing your feet.
So when we're traveling out on this glacier-- the root glacier. In the summertime, all the snow is melted off the surface. So we can see the obstacles, we can see our dangers, and we can see the safe path to go.
Obviously, there's a lot of really cool features out here on the ice, like the moulin behind us that's fun to get close to and take a look at, but you got to be thinking about it, and you got to be safe. You've got the crampons on your feet, which is new to you, making you more likely to stumble and fall. So you don't obviously, want to stumble near a big hole or crevasse.
Now you want to stumble somewhere where you can fall and pick yourself up. So when we go near a feature, a wall, a crevasse, or moulins that you want to get a better look at, you've got to think about your body balance. Is this your best way to balance?
No, because both your feet are right here and your top heavy. So when you go close to the edge of something, you want to have one foot back, one foot forward, and you can lean over, take a look, step back, and walk away. When we go up close to a feature like this, I want one person at a time, not a crowd, so we're not bumping each other, and you're paying attention to what you're doing, OK? So we can take turns and get a little better look.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Taking a hike out to the root glaciers is often people's highlight when they come to visit the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I hope the information that I gave you today will help you to have a fun and enjoyable experience. Enjoy your national parks.
Description
Glacier Travel Safety and Preparedness.
Duration
11 minutes, 37 seconds
Credit
Carlisle Antonio
Date Created
08/11/2016
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