April 12-13: Training days after a stormy Mt. Whitney attempt

After getting stormed off of Mt. Whitney the group decided to focus on training and learning some new skills. With stormy weather and snowfall all day long we put on our clothing layers to help be comfortable in the elements and we ventured out for a day of training. When weather turns us back early from a climb and we have a couple days to work with this becomes a unique opportunity for the participants to pick the brains of our experienced guide staff on any one of a number of topics. The group elected to review crevasse rescue pulley systems and to learn a little bit about the world of avalanches on day 1 and to go rock climbing on day 2.

Pictures of some of the highlights are below. The rest of the pictures are here: http://kurtwedbergphotography.com/Sierra-Trips/2010-Sierra-Trips/Training-Day-April-12-2010/11821720_sKaKG#835480687_yFyBu

SMI guide Karsten Delap teaching climbing knots at the SMI office

Kristine Lim and Mike Tate showing us good prussik knots

Building snow anchors for setting up a crevasse rescue pulley system

Kurt Wedberg teaching how we identify layers in the snowpack in a snow pit

Kurt Wedberg demonstrating a shovel compression test used to measure how reactive various layers in the snowpack are to stress

Karsten testing snow layers to failure using a Rutschblock test with skis on top of our snow pit

The group learning avalanche rescue techniques using transceivers, probes, and shovels to dig out buried transceivers simulating an avalanche burial.