It's definitely a low risk activity compared to other situations on a big, glaciated peak. But it costs us very little in terms of time or energy to probe our camp for potential crevasse danger with a bit more safety in mind. Here's some technique tips.

When a crevasse is unavoidable and must be crossed on your glaciated mountain climb, the technique you and your team employ will often be dictated by circumstances. The full video gets into three different procedures to be chosen and applied based on terrain slopes and crevasse sizes.

The plunge step is an age-old technique that still has its place in the mountains and is emblematic of the types of conscious decisions we alpine climbers may need to make even when it seems risks are very low. Here’s what I look for in terms of conditions that may make the plunge step beneficial along with the simple mechanics of the technique.

A “running belay,” a form of simul-climbing that is frequently used on snow climbs and climbs up glaciated peaks, helps mitigate certain risks, but it also adds new risks into the equation. The full video gets into how a running belay is performed and what pros and cons result from employing this climbing tactic so that we can best decide when it may make sense to use.

The rest step is a simple tool in the alpinist’s tool box. Despite its simplicity, it can be the most effective thing we can do to modulate our energy expenditure so that we can save it for when we need it most

As we continue our glacier travel series and before we get into more advanced movement techniques we first need to understand the fundamentals of moving as part of a group who are, literally, tied together. The full video gets into the specifics.

When we are using our mountaineering ice axe in "cane" position, we want to keep it in our uphill hand. Here is why.

As a climbing team on a glacier, we need to be prepared for a crevasse fall, but we also want to have the route planning and navigation skills to reduce the likelihood of having a crevasse fall. The full video provides ideas on how to plan route paths that help avoid crevasses.

The Garda hitch allows us to capture progress of the climbing rope through a haul system with only two, identical, snapgate carabiners. It's a good technique to have in case of emergencies, but it comes with some major downsides that limit the times I might want to use it.

Deciding how much climbing rope you need for glacier travel is a product of many factors. The number of teammates, the snow conditions, crevasse sizes, and preferred rescue systems are all inputs into how much space to have between climbers, how much length to keep in spare coils, and whether to have brake knots in the rope. All of that will calculate out to your total rope length. The full video explores some of these considerations.

A number of self-rescue techniques, across all types of climbing, require the use of a foot prusik to temporarily unweight the rope (usually when alternating weighting a waist prusik or other rope progress capture). It is very easy for that foot prusik to slide off of our foot, which slows us down and can be hard to get back in place if we are hanging in space. Simply girth hitching it to our foot can solve this problem.

In this next episode of our glacier travel series, we are presenting several options for climbers to tie into the rope and how we may choose to match our tie-in setups to our circumstances, gear, and position on the rope.

The "self-tending" prusik using a belay device to capture progress on a climbing haul system, often used for crevasse rescue, has become more complicated due to modern ropes. The thinner diameter of these ropes means tighter wraps on the prusik, which - in turn - means those wraps are small enough to get stuck in the device and break the capture system.

Continuing our glacier travel series, the full video shows the 6:1 drop loop crevasse rescue haul system and discusses how to modify it to meet some of the gear we may have, the rope we have available, and the status of the fallen climber.

Maybe you want to keep crampon straps longer, either because - like my kids - your feet are still growing, or you have both small and large boots that need different strap lengths, or you want to be able to lend out the crampons to anyone with feet bigger than yours. Regardless of reason, here is a solution to keep those straps out of the way if you do decide to keep a little extra length.

As we get deeper into a glacier travel series, we want to note that there are many effective ways to develop our climbing systems for safe passage on glaciated mountains. The full video gets into my perspective that, maybe, the single biggest thing we can do wrong, however, is get dogmatic about those systems and assume that, while risks change from glacier to glacier, our systems don't have to change as well.

As the seasons change in the alpine, so do our climbing equipment needs. Maybe an overlooked item that works slightly less well in extreme cold are standard locking carabiners. By swapping out a few standard lockers for double-gate carabiners, I can have a few carabiners that will prove more resistant to freezing.

We will frequently choose to connect ourselves to the climbing rope with a carabiner, rather than a knot, when on a glacier in order to facilitate things like crevasse rescue systems. We need to be considerate of the strengths and weaknesses of carabiner types in order to select the best carabiner for our climb of a glaciated peak. The full video offers some of the criteria I use to help me choose.

Thin and light, modern climbing slings and cord can be very difficult to untie when taking on heavy loads or becoming wet. Here's how using a particular type of carabiner can help solve that problem in the right circumstances.

We isolate damaged sections of a climbing rope by tying a knot with the damaged section in the knot bight. That keeps any load - you - off of the damaged section. But if we need to rappel past a damaged section, we need to be able to get our rappel setup from above that knot to below it while staying firmly and safely connected to the rope. The full video provides a procedure to do that.