Beginner's Guide to Glacier Traveling

Last week, I did a basic mountaineering course near Innsbruck, which taught me the basics of crevasse rescue, and this weekend J and I decided to go on our first ever glacier hike - to put theory into practice!

Preparation #

Gear #

See my gear list for a full list. But before going on this trip, I bought my own ice axe and crampons rather than renting them from the alpine club. I also thought about upgrading my old alpine boots, but I couldn’t find a pair I really liked. (More on finding footwear ¹ that fits in another post.)

The Route #

Day 1: Innsbruck (6:30) - Car (8:30) - Hochfeilerhutte (12:30) Day 2: Hochfeilerhutte (4:00) - Weißzint (8:30) - Hochfeilerhutte (11:00) - Car (14:30)

GPX:

Thoughts #

We expected a storm in the evening, so we decided to get up quite early on Saturday so we could get to the hut while it was still sunny. We got to the hut by noon and had a nice nap. Maybe because the hut had just opened a few days before we arrived, it wasn’t too crowded (maybe 10 of us altogether); it had a nice cosy feel. The food was the best I’ve ever had, and we could get seconds for almost everything!

The next morning we woke up at 3am and started walking before it became light. We reached the beginning of the glacier and changed into our alpine gear with crampons and harness, attached ourselves to the rope, and I led while J carried the rope and followed.

Watching movies, I always imagined that falling into a crevasse = death, and something that rarely happened as long as you were careful, but I was wrong. There were mini crevasses everywhere, and I tried to find ice that I felt safe to walk on. Since they were small crevasses, there wasn’t any real danger of us both falling into one big one, but it felt scary, as if I were walking in a field of mines I couldn’t see. Reading the route was hard; I didn’t really know what I was looking out for, the snow was soft, and each step felt heavy. Being above 3000m made it much harder to breathe, while J (who is very used to this altitude) was walking like it was a piece of cake. We managed to get to the summit in 4.5h, but I really had to struggle my way up, crawling on the snow. Walking up, it was hard and I was slightly scared - and didn’t know if I wanted to be doing this.

But walking down - was just amazing and breathtaking. There wasn’t anybody around us, we had the entire mountain to ourselves, and sliding down the snow was so easy and smooth that I thought I could go on forever. Until I fell into a mini crevasse. It was an interesting experience - J pulled me up immediately and I didn’t fall that far into it, but it felt kind of scary and exciting at the same time.

Anyway, it was great glacier travel practice, and I’d love to be more comfortable doing this type of thing in the future.