H2 Glacier Fear

Friday, 15 students and 5 teachers got out of school at about 2:30 to leave for Huayna Potosi. We picked up all of the gear at the shop, and arrived at the Refugio in the early evening. Many of the students just relaxed when we got there, while some of us others took a short hike. The weather was very foggy, so we weren't able to see anything along the way, which is pretty typical in this part of the valley. We returned from the hike as it got dark, and had a short time for devotionals. The devotionals were a bit more organized this time, as I put together a small little book with the help of some friends, Scott, Caity, Kristen, Donna, and Jim. After dinner, I talked on the topic of Fear/Fearing God with the students, and it was interesting to have them answering questions and hearing their thoughts along the way. It was a good time to have all 20 of us together and share our thoughts. After this, the students had free time for the rest of the night until they wanted to go to bed. Most of us stayed up playing Mafia, which was hilarious with the personalities of some of these students.

Saturday morning we got up, had breakfast, and then started putting on our gear to go into the glaciers. After getting everything together, we started the hike up to the glaciers. As soon as we started, it began to snow and continued to snow the entire way up to the glaciers. It was really fun for most of us to hike in the snow, even though it was getting a lot of our things wet.

When we arrived at the glaciers, everyone put on their crampons. I could tell that the main guide, Hugo, was pretty nervous about having this many students on glaciers. Especially since it was the first time for everyone there except me. After everyone had their crampons ready, Hugo taught everyone some different techniques for just walking on the glaciers. Some of the students did an excellent job of catching on to the technique, while others could not understand how to really slam their foot into the ice for security. We spent probably an hour or more just walking up the ice/snow without the ice picks, to really get the hang of the crampons. Even though some of the students were still only "walking" with their crampons instead of digging them in, we finally picked up the ice picks and Hugo and another guide, Julio, began showing how to walk WITH the ice pick.

Watching this was also very interesting. These things are awkward the first time you do them, and I could see how much difficulty it was causing for some of the students. For others, it came more naturally. At this point, some of the students were really enjoying themselves, while others just wanted to go back down to the Refugio because they were cold or they didn't like being on the glaciers (or in one instance someone thought it was boring). After doing this for a while, one of the guides climbed up to a high point were he secured a position to do some repelling down a large ice wall. Every student practiced some repelling down the wall, and that took up the rest of the time. Most everyone watched during this time, which made a lot of people cold. After that, we took off the crampons, and hiked back down to the Refugio, where we ate, and headed back to La Paz.
The trip turned out to be very safe. There were no injuries or anything. A couple students got sick feeling in the altitude, but they managed to eventually pull through. Overall, it was much of what I expected. Some students loved it and had a blast, and others really didn't like it all. The next Mountaineering Club trip will probably be camping and fishing again, so that we get a good rotation of trips. Thank you all for your prayers, and any of you that helped make this trip run more smoothly, either financially, or prayerfully.