March 16

"I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks. Shatter to foam, again. It was rare and comforting to waken late and hear the undiminished shouting of the water in the night. And at sun up it was still there, powerful and incessant, with the giant sun tangled in its rainbow spray, the grass blue with wetness, and the air heady as ether and scented with campfire smoke. 
By such a river it is impossible to believe that one will ever be tired or cold. Every sense applauds it. Taste it; feel its chill on the teeth; it is purity absolute. Watch its racing current, its steady renewal of force; it is transient and eternal. And listen again to its sounds: get far enough away so that the noise of falling tons of water does not stun the ears, and hear how much is going on underneath - a whole symphony of smaller sounds. Hiss and splash and gurgle, the small talk of side channels, the whisper of blown and scattered spray gathering itself and beginning to flow again, secret and irresistible, among the wet rocks." - Wallace Stegner


The last few days have been spent doing mountaineering classes at our old base camp in the forest. We learned how to rope in for glacier travel. It's a complicated process but fairly systematic. Practice overtime will make it easier. Then we learned about rope ascension using only prussick knots (waist and foot prussicks). This system is useful during crevace rescue and during rock climbing.
Yesterday we hiked 7 k up to our new basecamp next to a beautiful glacier. It is a lunar landscape - nothing living, only glacially polished rock and debris. Our plan for the next four days is to ice climb, learn crevace rescue techniques, and possibly do peak ascents (depending on the weather, of course).
We went to bed under a brilliantly starry sky last night (the southern cross right over us), but woke up this morning to a storm that rolled in overnight, pummeling us with wind and rain. Matt, Natalia, and I are LODs for the next two days but all we can do for now is hunker down in the tents and wait out this storm.  There has been lots of talk about home going on in my tent - making me feel a little homesick. Four more weeks in this beautiful place. I'll be home in no time.