As an American who came to the Alps with extensive climbing and ski touring experience, I quickly realized that I was very much out of my element on glaciers. It only took one step, watching the snow drop away beneath my feet with a black hole staring back up at me, to realize it’s a deadly venue. When a few centimeters of snow is all that separates you from falling into a crevasse, you are either going to be lucky, or unlucky. No one is immune to hazards on a glacier, but with training and experience you can minimize the risk. And you must minimize this risk, for yourself and for the partners you go to the mountains with.
I’ve had many close calls, including near crevasse falls, getting caught in whiteouts, and working through complicated labyrinths of crevasses. For those that move through the Alps on a regular basis, and venture on to glaciers, it’s part of the experience. My own stories are classic.
Once, with a friend who had little to no glacier travel skills, we skied off a summit and on to a glacier. Our route required that we briefly climb the glacier, cross a shallow pass to our right, then ski down to our hut. From our high point, the route was clear,
We skied off the summit under a sunny sky, but once on the expanse of the glacier, things rapidly changed. A thick cloud developed and engulfed us. We could see nothing. While not a large glacier, it was, like glaciers tend to be, mostly featureless.
Our tools were a GPS (this was pre-Smartphones), a paper map, and Janine and I’s decent amount of experience and training. Time was short, we were out late and darkness was just over an hour away. We knew we didn’t have far to travel to reach our pass so we immediately went into navigation mode.