Glaciers!: The Art of Travel, the Science of Rescue

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and technically detailed presentation
Review: This is a book on something I knew nothing about before--the art and science of travelling, climbing, and rescue on glaciers. There are six chapters that dicuss various aspects of glacier survival and climbing skills, including equipment and clothing, glacier features and hazards, rope techniques for travel and rescue (which is called "rigging" in mountaineering parlance), anchors and anchor systems, and glacier travel techniques and crevasse rescue. In addition, there are three appendices on knots for glacier travel and rescue, the self-arrest (which is about how to stop yourself or a companion from sliding or falling), and mechanical advantage, which is devoted to different pulley systems.

The book is obviously intented for serious climbers and rescue personnel since much of it is fairly technical and detailed. Just the rope rescue and pulley systems can get pretty complex, but I enjoyed reading about all of it nevertheless, and I have new appreciation of and understanding for the skill it takes to survive or perform a rescue under these conditions.

There are so many interesting topics on glacier travel and survival discussed that it's hard to summarize or pick just one as an example, but it was interesting to learn about the pros and cons of different-numbered rope teams. For example, there is always a trade-off between the number of the people in the team, safety, and speed of travel. Two-person teams can travel the fastest but are considered the least safe since if one person falls into a crevasse it's very difficult to effect a rescue. Three-person teams are considered the minimum for safe travel but are slower than two-man teams, and five-man teams are considered the safest but are the slowest. Although considered the minimum for safe travel, for a three-man team, it turns out that it's very difficult to perform a rescue if the middle person falls into a crevasse, whereas if the person on either end falls in it's not as difficult.

Each discipline has its own special terminology and mountaineering is no different. I learned a lot of new words and terms, so I'll mention just a few of these here. I learned about the Bilgeri rescue, the Canadian drop-loop systen, how to rescue the middle person (which as I said, can present special difficulties), the Prusik knot and single-strand food Prusik, the Garda and mariner's knots, belay systems for low to high force falls, mechanical ascenders and mini-ascenders, firn tubes (an anchor tube that can be driven into the snow, bollards (anchors for snow and ice), pickets (which are just like it sounds and are metal stakes), ice screws, and many others.

One final odd thing I learned is that there is a photo of a mountaineer wading almost hip deep across a slush pool. I didn't know that glaciers also contained pools of melted water. You'd think all the water would be frozen. But I read once that the glaciers and snow on Mt. Ranier are melting so much that sometimes enough flood water has run out of certain ice caves that they've occasionally knocked both people and a trail outhouse down. :-) There's an odd German word for this type of flood but unfortunately I don't remember it right now.

The text is well written and there are many illustrations, especially of the many rope, knots, and pulley systems, configurations and techniques which show their application in different situations. This is an excellent book on glaciers for mountaineering which I suspect will be mainly of interest to serious climbers and rescue team members.