Glacier Travel

Many popular climbing routes in the Pacific Northwest can only be accessed by crossing glaciers. While traveling over glaciers presents several unique dangers, using good glacier travel techniques can help mitigate the risk.

Lesson Objectives

After reading this page students should be able to:

• Define what is a glacier and identify some glacier hazards.

• Explain what is a crevasse and how it is formed.

• Explain how to detect a crevasse.

• Connect to the end or middle of a rope team and set up for glacier travel.

• Travel as an efficient rope team member. 

• Perform team arrest. 

• Use prusik to belay rope team members in and out. 

• Prusik up a rope for self-rescue. 

How do Glaciers move? 

When traveling on a glacier, climbers will generally have all of the gear they would have for snow climbing: helmet, harness, crampons, ice axe, carabiners, and rope. In addition, all climbers must carry at least two prusik cords in order to be able to ascend out of a crevasse for self-rescue.

Traveling over glaciated terrain is an integral part of many climbs in the high mountains. One of the main risks to consider when traveling on glaciers is falling into a crevasse. Some crevasse fall accidents happen when part of a visible crevasse collapses, but many more involve crevasses that the climbers did not see at all. For that reason, it is common practice for climbers to rope up together when crossing glaciers so that if anyone in the team were to unexpectedly fall into a crevasse the rest of the team could use their self-arrest skills to stop the fall, then start to perform crevasse rescue.

Glacier travel rope teams are often made up of 3 to 5 climbers, spaced apart by 12m (good for the Cascades. Size is based on preventing the fall of 1 climber into the crevasses on your route), depending on the situation. Climbers attach to the rope by tying an Alpine Butterfly Knot at the appropriate location and clipping that to their harness belay loop using 2 locking carabiners—opposite and apposed (if a climber falls into a crevasse their carabiner(s) can cross-load and/or come unscrewed which is bad if you are only attached with one).

On Mazama climbs, climbers will usually pre-rig their prusik loops on the climbing rope so that if they were to fall in a crevasse they would be more ready to begin a self-rescue by ascending the rope. To pre-rig prusiks, tie each prusik cord onto the climbing rope using a prusik hitch. If rigging both loops on the same side, the leg loop (the longer of the two loops) should be closest to the climber's tie-in knot and the waist loop should be farther away (think "waist away"). The waist loop should be clipped to the harness belay loop with a locking carabiner. The leg loop can be tucked out of the way. Since the middle climbers don't know ahead of time which way they would fall, they may choose to rig one prusik on the strand ahead and one on the strand behind, knowing that one of the prusiks will need to be untied and retied on the other strand before ascending the rope.

Running Belay

It is necessary to protect a snow or ice pitch with a running belay in some situations. In general, this involves a roped team that sets, passes, and retrieves pickets or other anchor devices. The rope is coiled between each of the team members before they start and after they reach the next multi-point anchor. The following describes the sequence of events. 

Starting the Pitch: As the leader starts the pitch, the second team member belays the leader from an anchored position using their waist prusik. When the slack between them is gone, the second member calls “PICKET,” and the leader stops and sets a picket. The leader and second member proceed; the second member is belayed with a prusik by the third member. When the second reaches the first picket they again call “PICKET,” and the leader stops and places another picket, calling “CLEAR'' when finished. The second clips through and calls “CLEAR.” The leader, second, and third member then proceed, the third being belayed by the next member. 

As each member reaches a picket they call “PICKET” and “CLEAR” as they approach and pass a picket. Using this protocol there is always only one climber between each anchor point. Trailing climbers do not proceed to clip through until the person ahead has clipped through.  The party does not continue moving until the last person has clipped, cleaned the piece of protection and calls out "CLIMBING".

Ending the Pitch: The leader will proceed until all of the pickets are set and a good multi-point anchor position (or safe location is reached). The leader then builds the anchor and clips in. The leader belays in the second with their leg prusik, coiling the rope between them as the team approaches. Calls of “PICKET” and “CLEAR” continue. When the second reaches the anchor they clip in and then belay in the third. During the entire pitch, the last team member is collecting pickets. They are handed back to the leader for use on the next pitch, and the process is repeated.