Today was our first day on the glacier. We woke up early for breakfast then headed out in our big mountaineering boots. One of the members of the group stayed back and rested for the day because he wasn't feeling well. It is an hour and a half to the glacier, and I still wasn't feeling super great.
My headache had gone away but my stomach was still hurting a lot, so it took us a long time to get there.
Once we were at the glacier, the rest of the group went up with a few of the guides and we went up with the main guide. Our plan was to do as much as we could, then turn back to camp. We put our crampons on for the first time ever. Below is a picture of someone with crampons on their boots. They are spiky yellow, clipped onto the bottom of her boot.
Crampons aren't too difficult to use, but they are really sharp so they can cut up the bottom of your pants. Walking with them for the first time felt a little unstable, especially on ice. I felt like I was just going to fall. This was the wrong approach because you really have to trust your crampons and not think about it too much. The one thing you have to watch out for is them hitting each other. I was walking following our guide and I put my feet too close together and tripped on my crampon. I immediately fell on the ice, but we were tied in, so Alejo, our guide, made sure I didn't go sliding down the ice. Still, it was a painful experience. I fell and landed right on my knee and banged it up pretty good. We kept going and learned different steps and techniques to use with crampons. One is called the duck walk, which is how it sounds, you point your toes outwards and walk wide. Then there's the American technique where you put one foot slightly diagonal on the ice for stability and the other you dig the toe into the ice. That one you can also just do the toe of both your crampons in, but that is for more experienced people. The last step is my favorite one and it is the French technique where you face perpendicular to the slope and line one of your feet up in the direction you're facing and then cross the other over. After that you just repeat and it's sort of like the karaoke step, except you don't switch back and forth. We used our ice ax a bit but mostly just to guide us while wearing crampons.
We then headed down because I was feeling really sick, and we had to go anyway because it started to snow. By the time we got back to camp, it was a blizzard. We had a really early dinner that night then discussed the plan for the next day's summit attempt of Tareja and went to bed.
P.S.
I may look a little grumpy in some of these pictures, but I'm not. I was just really tired and not feeling well. I'm actually having a great time!
And you also look - dare I say it - tall!
You look very fierce in those big boots:)