Fundamentals of Moving Roped Together on Glacier as Part of a Climbing Team

(This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!)

“Crawl. Walk. Run”… as they say.

Moving across a dynamic environment like a glacier requires a lot of knowhow. The “floor” beneath our feet is literally moving. Sure, maybe not at any one particular moment, but it does change from day to day and week to week and - certainly - from year to year. It won’t be climbed the same way, twice. Plus, that instant when its movement goes from imperceptible to entirely perceptible could very well be while you are on it.

So, when it comes time to tie your life into reliance on another life, we really do have to work well as a team. It might be the quintessential example of teamwork. My life is in your hands, and yours in mine. But even if all of the life-and-death speak is viewed as hyperbolic (I don’t think it is, but others may), there are still some very real, practical difficulties that come with trying to move together, as a team, when tied to one another.

The video goes into more detail, but we need to manage rope slack to avoid crevasse falls becoming longer than they need be (if we are so unfortunate as to have one). We need to manage that slack while making turns and going up and down terrain that forces teammates to move at different speeds. The communication demands that come with being many, many meters apart are real, too.

So, back to “crawl, walk, and run.” Before we can get into maximizing our efficient movement when climbing a glacier, we first have to master the basics. We just need to be able to work together without tugging on one another nor creating too much slack in the system. While it sounds easy, it is actually quite challenging to do in reality. And further, just walking over the glacier is what we spend the bulk of our time doing on a glacier climb; so, the worse we are at it the more impactful it becomes to the potential success or failure of the climb.

This video is foundational. As it mentions, other videos will go into more advanced techniques (like when we start adding fall protection between climbers in a moving rope team). But, before we are “running,” we best be able to “crawl,” or in this case “walk,” quire proficiently.