Does the Abominable Snow Man live here?

With a shovel in my hands and the warm sun on my bare back, I went to work with the others in my group. I knew I would have to put my t-shirt back on pretty soon, unless I wanted a nasty sunburn. There were a lot of us working, but I knew it would still take us awhile to finish our snow caves.

Wait, did I just use the words "sunburn" and "snow cave" in the same sentence? If you're familiar with the mountains, then this may not be a strange concept for you, but for someone who grew up accustomed to the frigid temps and low altitudes of Minnesota, it felt a bit bizarre.

The Winter Mountaineering trip of the school was designed as an eleven day outing, in which we would learn how to travel, camp, and climb in snow and ice. I understand it may not be the most applicable for our setting in Arkansas, but I was still excited about building and sleeping in a snow cave.

Travel by snow shoes, tents pitched on snow, water sources found by chopping holes through ice on alpine lakes, practicing avalanche rescue scenarios, climbing steep slopes by kicking steps into the snow, and descending steep slopes by sliding on my butt, all with a 75 pound backpack, adequately describes the activities that took place up until we started building snow caves. Unfortunately, it was such a time consuming process that we didn't finish in time. The sun went down and it got dark, so we had to pitch tents instead.

After having breakfast the next morning, we were told that our leader had come down with altitude sickness - "Pack up, we're going home," they told us. Our trip was cut short by a week. On the one hand, I was disappointed that we didn't get to finish the trip - no snow caves, no summitting Mt. Humphreys (just under 14,000 ft), and no traveling across a glacier. But on the other hand, I was very excited to know that I would get to see Jen and Marin soon, sleep in my bed that night, and not wake up to put on frozen boots the following morning!

So for now, we have a couple days off, and then I leave later this week for four days in Death Valley, to learn the skills of Desert Canyoneering!