Climbing Steiny

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There is something wild about standing on a sheet of ice in a tank top and being hot. No, this isnt a indoor skating rink, but the top of Steinglacier. It was quite warm, even in the mountians the day in went ice climbing.
After being outfitted with special boots, and packing a borrowed backpack full of fleeces, crampons (spikes for the bottoms of the boots) ice hammers, larger ice axes, harnesses, ropes and carabeeners, the guide and us 9 advertures headed out to Steinglacier. After an hour of fast mountain driving, the glacier was in view. Our guide, whos name i cant pronounce, said "good morning glacier" as we pulled up. The next thing we know we have walked right up to the edge of "steiny", and after a short lesson in global warming, put on our crampons, and have all been attached via our harnesses and carabeeners chain gang style. being the smallest, i had to lead the line. Weaving our way up the glacier to avoid crevasses was actually quite a fun hike, with several stops for lessons about glaciers, looking at the ice, and creating stairs to climb down later. Our climbing site was a crevass, which was so cool! After a while of eating and setup, into the cevass we repelled. I can describe the technique of iceclimbing too well, but it involves getting the spikes far enough in the ice to hold your weight, but shallow enough in the ice that you can get them out at will. It was great fun, and really kinda wild when for my last climb i was lowered to the bottom of the crevass.
Unfortunately, we did have to leave at some point, as we were walking down the ice, with a fantastic view in front of us, i realized how sore and tired i was.
Oh yes, people in Switzerland actually yodel.

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