Jun7

BCEP – Snow School!

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Last year, I took the BCEP class with the Mazamas – Basic Climbing Education Program. It was interesting; a great chance to review my well-trained skills, practice some that I hadn’t used in ages, and get to meet some new climbing and outdoors people. It was fun, and ticked all the boxes that I had hoped that it would.

My faith in the outdoors community reinvigorated, I quickly and happily volunteered to help teach BCEP this year. I was expecting to assist with the same group that I’d taken the class with the previous year, since leaders tend to continue teaching year over year, so I was a bit surprised when I was placed with a different group… but it turns out, this new group was just starting out – the first year the leader had led a BCEP team on their own.

The chance to help out with a new group, and to help build a similar culture of excitement and optimism for the outdoors? All while getting to show people the unbridled joy of rock climbing? Of seeing new views off the side of a mountain?

Well. Sign me right the heck up.


Saturday, 22-Apr-2023



I love the snow.

I love the cold, I love the smell of snow, and I love the feeling of being an arctic explorer, forging through an unexplored world at the spearpoint of civilization.

I mean, okay. We were like 500ft from the parking lot here, but you know what? Thanks to the snow and the wind we could barely see the cars. So it counts, right?

Right!



This weekend was the Snow School portion of BCEP – taking the students out into the cold, and trying some of the skills that we’d been practicing out in the “real world”. It’s one thing to learn about rope travel while on a warm hike, but it’s something again to be post-holing through the snow, having to stop and freeze every 30ft to plant a picket.

We started off easy and fun – setting up a few practice stations, and moving the students through them one by one. I mostly just manned a rappel station, but I did take a few moments to escape and play photographer… and maybe have a snack and mug of cocoa or two as time allowed.



We went through the curriculum, did some “ascents” where we roped up and explored some nearby hills, and generally had a blast. Then, all too soon, the day was done and our coursework completed. We did a quick skills test for the students (which they all passed with flying colors, unsurprisingly) and then headed back to the parking lot, with the goal of moseying onward to the Mazama’s Lodge for an evening of food, revelry, and an early evening in preparation for a possible ascent up the Palmer Glacier in the morning…



Jun5

BCEP – Land Navigation at Mt. Tabor

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Last year, I took the BCEP class with the Mazamas – Basic Climbing Education Program. It was interesting; a great chance to review my well-trained skills, practice some that I hadn’t used in ages, and get to meet some new climbing and outdoors people. It was fun, and ticked all the boxes that I had hoped that it would.

My faith in the outdoors community reinvigorated, I quickly and happily volunteered to help teach BCEP this year. I was expecting to assist with the same group that I’d taken the class with the previous year, since leaders tend to continue teaching year over year, so I was a bit surprised when I was placed with a different group… but it turns out, this new group was just starting out – the first year the leader had led a BCEP team on their own.

The chance to help out with a new group, and to help build a similar culture of excitement and optimism for the outdoors? All while getting to show people the unbridled joy of rock climbing? Of seeing new views off the side of a mountain?

Well. Sign me right the heck up.


Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023

Land Navigation. Orienteering, travel by compass and map.

Not the most common, in this day and age, thanks to GPS and well-marked trails… but the thing is, glaciers don’t really have well marked trails. And while the summit is generally pretty obvious… the route to get there isn’t always to clear cut. And the descent down is usually even less so evident…

Sometimes, the old-school is the best-school – Which is definitely the case when it comes to making sure people are ready for adventures in the back country. With that in mind, our BCEP team forged onward with practicing the age-old skill of navigating with a map and compass.



As with most hikes, there’s not really too much for me to say about this orienteering course. We walked, stopped at various checkpoints to do skills practice, and we moved onward. It rained a bit, my map got wet, and I pushed the limits of what would happen to a paper map that gets waterlogged.

(Ed Note: Don’t worry, Dear Reader, because Ben had a backup map in a waterproof sleeve in case the experiment didn’t go so well. Turns out, though, paper is more resilient than we generally give it credit for… and his map stayed perfectly serviceable throughout)

We found out points, helped people out who weren’t quite feeling it, and had an absolute blast of a time… without ever leaving city limits.

May11

Snow backpacking on the White River Glacier – with Jess!

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Friday and Saturday, 14-April-2023 and 15-April-2023



It’s been a hot minute since I went backpacking… and an even hotter minute since I’ve been backpacking with someone!


This weekend, I’d be taking Jess on her first snow backpacking experience – so I went with the basics, and we headed up to the White River Glacier to hopefully take advantage of the campsite that I’d tamped down back in… January? Okay, yeah there’s no way that campsite is still prepared.

Ahh well – it’d just make it more of a learning experience, right? Right. Right!


Friday:

We got a nice Pine State biscuits breakfast, and headed into the woods. Snow. Onto the Glacier.

As always, it was beautiful.

As always, there’s not much to say about walking. We snowshoed, it was fun, had a blast.



Got to camp, carved out a campsite, and settled in for a relaxing and cold evening… good books, good gin, and delicious cocoa!

Nothing really huge of note, though I was really happy with how the tent site came out!




Saturday:

Saturday dawned nice and clear, with a beautifully crisp and cold world around the campsite.

We had some coffee and tea, a good breakfast, and headed upward, toward the little overlook at the top of the glacier. It was lovely, with solid snow and great views of the Cascades down to the south – and some stellar clouds filtering the light around us!


We hiked upward, and descended back down. Packed up camp, and made the shortish walk back to the car… just in time to make the early dinner bell at the Timberline Lodge, and get to see the sunset from the restaurant!