Marlys had a little excitement yesterday

As I mentioned in the last post, we were off to Monarch Ski Area for Alpine Team training on Saturday. It was shut down for the season so no one would have to dodge us on the slopes.

We got there about 8:30 and the skies were overcast and threatening snow.

After gearing up we headed in search of a slope to do self-arrest practice, but the ~5 inches of snow over night made this problematic as we could not get a good slide going.

Our Lead decided that instead of us learning a bad technique we would leave the self-arrest practice until next month, when we are going to St. Mary's Glacier.

The group headed over to Gunbarrel, which is to the far left when you come into the Monarch parking lot to work on roped travel, belay techniques and setting of snow pickets and fixed lines.

For those of you who have skied Gunbarrel know it is steep and with the new snow from the night before and snow that accumulated during the day, we had plenty of fresh stuff to work with.

We worked on boot belays first, which is where a ice ax with a runner and biner on the head is sunk shaft first into the snow. The belayer then runs the rope from the climber through the biner to a hip belay to catch a fall. The belayer puts their foot on the ice ax head to keep it in the snow.

We did a number of these with the climber taking falls, on purpose, to practice stopping the fall.

Then is was Marlys' turn. Marlys weights about 95# and she was concerned with stopping a falling climber, which I don't think we had one that came in at less then 160#.

Marlys stopped three falls in a row, which showed that with the right moves she really had no problems.

The fourth one though went wrong as the ax had been worked loose a little due to the previous falls and this time it pulled out from under her boot and then went flying. It smacked her in the knee and the pick hit her arm putting a hole through her shell and shirt.

She of course went flying about 10 feet down the slope before stopping.

Everyone, heard the twang when it happened and we all rushed over to her. Taking a ice ax to the knee is painful (I imagine) and she was in in pain.

There was some discussion, during the debrief on what had happened as to whether the belayers foot should be on the ax head or on the runner in front of the ax.

The concern about crampons with their sharp edges was talked about.

Some research is needed.

After a few minutes though she was back up on her feet and ready for the afternoons task of climbing as a roped team.

Lucky.

The rope work in the afternoon happened in darkening, snowy and windy conditions.

We got to try out all of our new toys, but there is a need for Marlys and I to get more carabiners.

I asked one of the other folks how many is enough, and he said he would tell me when he got there.

There are so many types and uses it can be pretty confusing, but lite and strong can be driving factors.

As the day progressed the snow got heavier the wind blew harder and by the end we were a tired group.