Taining days

I have settled into my new home for the moment in Valdez.  It is good to get back into Anna's B and B.  She is the sweetest lady who houses and feeds all of us in the AMGA courses and exams in Valdez.  It gets to be a pretty busy house when somewhere around 20 of us are all staying on the same block and she is cooking for all of us.  

We went up to ski at Cracked Ice two days ago.  Found great skiing on the North aspects.  It was good to be out doing a nice tour.  I certainly missed the heli and my heavy alpine ski setup, but there is also something great about touring up and earning your turns.  It is also pretty exciting to be out training with the other candidates for the Ski Mountaineering Exam.  Practicing everything, discussing everything, everybody's nervous energy is great.  It really seems like a good, solid crew in the exam.  

View of Cherry Couloir on Python

From Cracked Ice

After our tour on Cracked Ice we went and practiced our crevasse rescue drills.  It went well for everyone, but I am sure we will all run through it a few more times before Mon.  It is interesting how all of us have all trained a ton for this specific test, and most of us have all pulled people out of crevasses in real-life scenarios, but it is still stressful to do the drill with someone standing over you with a little notebook to grade you. 

Yesterday we toured up to the Berlin Wall.  We picked the North Ridge approach to make it a little trickier and ended up battling our way up through rotten snow and howling winds.  There was no question that we were going to take the simpler approach from the south col for our second lap.  All in all, settling in well.  Looking forward to the rest of the week training and sending this exam!