Monty Montepare - Red Flags and Blue Ice

 

 

At 23 years old, I was in my third season working as a glacier guide in Alaska. I took people hiking on glaciers, ice climbing on glaciers. And that spring, I had successfully summited the 16,000-foot glaciated volcano that looms over town. I was feeling very confident in my skills in the mountains, and I could finally grow a full beard. [audience laughter] 

 

So, when my friend, Elizabeth, asked if I wanted to be her assistant on a fly-in base camping trip, I said, “Oh, yeah, that sounds super chill.” [audience laughter] She told me the four clients were the women that I had met that afternoon on the deck of the guide service, they were decked out head toe in brand new Arc'teryx rain gear, which is a red flag. [audience laughter] 

 

Not only is Arc’teryx the Prada of outdoor equipment, [audience laughter] but generally speaking, the newer the gear, the less the experience, which was exceptionally true in this case. [audience laughter] They were from New York City,- [audience cheers] -and had never been camping. [audience laughter] They had never slept in a tent. I lived in a tent. [audience laughter] Elizabeth said, “Yeah, that's why they want you along.” She said they really like the idea of a full bearded Alaskan along [audience laughter] to protect them from the wilderness. How could I say no? [audience laughter]

 

Fly-in base camping is like car camping with a bush plane. So, all six of us get into an airplane, the size of a minivan with wings. We fly for 40 minutes over forests, and rivers, and mountains and glaciers, some of the wildest landscape on the planet. And the plane lands on a little gravel strip in a giant valley next to an even bigger glacier. We're surrounded by snowcapped peaks dripping with ice. There's these babbling creeks, beautiful green alpine. I'm pumped, because I just got a free plane ride to a place I've never been before. 

 

Our clients are in a state of shock, [audience laughter] and awe and stimulation overload. As the plane leaves and goes out of sight, I watch all four of them have the gut-wrenching realization that they just paid somebody to strand them out here. [audience laughter] They wanted their own personal space, because it was the end of a long trip, so they each wanted their own tent. But they also wanted to sleep next to each other, because they were afraid of camping. [audience laughter] So, I set up four identical tents, wall to wall, like a nylon apartment building in the wild. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

And that night, Elizabeth cooked dinner, and I entertained and their first night out was like an REI ad come to life. [audience laughter] The goal of this weekend was to have a relaxing trip, maybe take a couple day hikes. So, the next day, we set out to hike to this area of alpine on the other side of the valley. It was a beautiful sunny summer day. But after a couple hours of rocky walking, morale was low. [audience laughter] This was the end of their whirlwind, let's go everywhere in Alaska trip, and they were over it. I'm pulling out all the stops too. I'm doing interop on geomorphology, [audience laughter] pointing out the patterns, glacial output, streams carve, telling lichen jokes. [audience laughter] Fun stuff. [audience laughter] None of it is landing. 

 

We get to the head of the valley and we see that the easiest way into the alpine is over this glacier. Elizabeth and I take people hiking on glaciers all summer long. We don't have our full kit, but it's good weather, good hikers, we're good to go. When we get up on the ice, everything changes. 

 

Summer glaciers are alive. The ice is sparkling. There's these creeks carving these beautiful channels. There's these blue pools of water that are reflecting that glacier blue from the inside. It's stunning. And our clients start enjoying themselves. They're engaging with the environment. They're taking selfies, doing yoga poses. [audience laughter] This is what they're here for. [audience laughter] 

 

And then, we encounter a little bit of snow, and then a little bit more snow. When you are on a winter glacier that's covered in snow, it's customary to rope yourself to each other in case somebody unexpectedly breaks through the snow and falls into a crevasse. In the summer, the snow is gone, and you can see all the crevasses and just walk around them. This is a summer glacier, but there's some patches of winter left over. 

 

So, Elizabeth goes ahead to scout our way off of the ice, which can be problematic. And I stay behind guiding our clients. I've got them behind me in a single file line, and I'm making sure to stay as much as we can on the exposed ice. If we have to step on snow at all, I use my ski pole to probe it first to make sure that it's snow over ice, not snow over air. 

 

Now, I'm having a good time. [audience laughter] I'm moving my clients through terrain. I'm picking lines that are mostly ice. If I got to deal with a little bit of snow, I probe, I step, I probe, I step. I'm thinking, I am a good guide. [audience laughter] Then, the next step I take is just in front of my probe pole. The snow beneath me disintegrates instantly and I begin to free fall into the glacier immediately. For long enough to think a few things, first, I'm going to die, followed by, what an embarrassing way for a glacier guide to die. [audience laughter]

 

And then, hey, let's try and not die. I put my arms, and legs and ski pole out to try and slow me down, and I come to a stop on this rotten pile of snow. I'm 20ft below the surface of the glacier. It is dark and cold. It's like a long narrow hallway with tall ceilings and a single skylight. I have been inside glaciers before, but never involuntarily. [audience laughter] Not to mention that being swallowed whole by the earth is an immensely humbling experience. [audience laughter] I just left the four New York never campers [audience laughter] who had just spent their first night in a tent after being flown into the middle of nowhere and then watched the guy they brought to protect them from the wilderness vanish into thin air. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

I assessed my situation. I was not injured besides my ego. I couldn't see or hear my clients. I didn't know where Elizabeth was. So, I decided the best thing to do was to wait. My mind was racing, how was I ever going to get out of here? How was I ever going to live this down If I did? How big of a mistake did I just make? I was already starting to get cold and I knew that our emergency equipment and technical gear was over a two-hour hike from where we were. I knew that even if we initiated a helicopter rescue, it can take up to eight hours for them to show up. 

 

I knew that this was not the bottom of the crevasse. I guessed the ice in that area was anywhere from 600ft to 800ft deep. What I was standing on was just rotten snow bridges that had collapsed from two or three years ago and gotten lodged in this constriction. I started to do some preliminary investigation of the snow beneath me. But I didn't want to poke on anything too hard, feeling like I might trigger a second trap door. And that's how most people who perish in crevasse falls go, is they fall down to a point where they get squeezed by the walls of the ice and are slowly crushed. 

 

Glacier ice is so dense that it eats sound. So, I sat there in the quiet with just my thoughts constricting and releasing my muscles to try and stay warm without moving. Finally, Elizabeth looked down at me through the hole that I had punched in the snow. We made eye contact and neither of us needed to say, we should have brought a rope. [audience laughter] 

 

We went into problem solving mode. I told her I thought that I could climb up [unintelligible [00:43:38] but I didn't know how to get past the overhanging lip of snow at the top of the crack. It's hard to get past the snowy lip even if you're roped in and you fall into a crevasse. By punching through, you create this overhang that you have to somehow get over. Elizabeth's eyes lit up and she said, “If you can get up here, I can get you past that lip,” and then she disappeared. 

 

By the time I started climbing, I had been in this crevasse for at least 20 minutes. I'm cold and I'm stiff. It was narrow enough that I could touch each wall. I start pushing and pulling on the walls with my hand and using smaller cracks as handholds, improving tiny ledges with my ski pole. I climb up 5ft and 10ft. And then, I look down and I do not like what I see. This snow I had landed on looks like cotton candy, and there's darkness through the holes. Any time that I knock an ice crystal through them, I cannot hear it hit the bottom. 

 

I climb up five more feet until I'm finally right below the snow, a place that I can't go any further by myself. I establish this icy stance, and the reality of this situation hits me really hard. I have just turned a relaxing weekend in the wilderness into a life-or-death situation. And I'm terrified. And just then, I hear the flap of fabric and a flash of color. The first of four brightly colored brand new [audience laughter] Arc’teryx rain jackets- [audience cheers and applause] -tied sleeve to sleeve is lowered down in front of me. [audience laughter] I had never been so happy my clients had brand new rain gear. I grab a hold of what is at least a $3,000 rope. [audience laughter] Elizabeth and those New Yorkers pulled me past the lip and into the sunshine. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

When I got there, I was embarrassed. [audience laughter] But they tried to soothe me. They said things like, “We're just really impressed that you climbed out of there. And you know, everyone makes mistakes.” [audience laughter] They even swore themselves to secrecy to hide my shame, [audience laughter] which I hope they told some people, because that is one doozy of a first-time camping tale. [audience laughter] I myself didn't tell anybody for years. I was so ashamed of this incident. But these days, I own that guide service and I tell all the new guides this story under the heading, the glacier does not care how full your beard is. [audience laughter] Because the truth is, we all do make mistakes. And the real shame is not being able to admit them and share them with others, so that we can all learn. Thank you.