Glacier course - 2 days

The course provides an introduction to glacier travel. The goal of the course is to introduce you to the glacier landscape and learn essential information to be able to travel safely in a rope team with others. In the course we will become familiar with equipment, glacier rescue, glacier navigation and glaciology. 

Suitable for anyone with normal physical fitness. No prior knowledge of glaciers required.

The course starts in Koldedalen or Tyin and will consist of two days where the course leader aims to teach you as much as possible about glaciers before you embark on your own adventures with others who can travel on glaciers. In a rope team it is important that not only 1 person has the competence. What happens if that person falls into a crevasse?

We go through several different scenarios, where you have to go secured with ropes, how to set ice screws as intermediate anchors, snow bridges, and much more exciting stuff.

Day 1: Get to know the equipment and ice

The goal for the day is to become familiar with equipment and techniques that are appropriate for moving on a glacier. We will go through:

• Use of crampons
• Ice axe functions
• clamp knot sling and rope
• The function of the rope layer

Day 2: 

The goal for the day is that we will go in rope teams and take turns leading. We will use what we learned the day before to go on a glacier, and learn about different methods on snow and blue ice. The goal is for everyone to understand the basic principles and get some pegs to hang them on. We will learn about new things:

• Crevasses and glaciology
• Safety and rescue in crevasses

Equipment and clothing

We recommend wearing several thin insulating layers as this makes it easier to regulate the temperature, so bring clothes you would pack for a day trip in winter.

This means:

• Longs and jersey inside
• warm sweater or jacket (this should be the insulating layer, primaloft, down or fleece work well)
• Wind and waterproof outer layer that keeps you dry and warm. We will have a lot of close contact with snow and you will probably get wet in your shoes, gloves and/or through the outer layer during the day.
• hat and mittens/gloves with an extra change of mittens
• sunglasses and sunscreen
• thick socks
• gaiters (very useful when moving on a snowy glacier)

Tyin Aktiv provides the necessary safety equipment mentioned above. If you have any of your own equipment that you would like to familiarize yourself with, you are welcome to bring it.

The course can be completed even in character-building weather! We will find a suitable place to learn according to the conditions. We will use the snowdrifts and glaciers we have around us at Tyin, Koldedalen and Jotunheimen.