====== AMTL Day 1 ====== **0600** Breakfast **0700** Meeting at AAI (American Alpine Institute, the company that does the AMTL courses) * I had already met Chris and Shivesh the day before, now I also met Brigitte, Andy, Cary and Tristam. And of course our guides Alistair and Erin. * We spent the whole morning checking our equipment and getting ready for the trip. Everyone had to rent at least some equipment like plastic boots, crampons, snowshoes... The goal for the first days was to spend 5 days on Mt Baker so we had to be prepared for pretty much everything down to snow at -10 celsius. The Equipment list should give a pretty good idea what we took. * After we had finally got all our eqipment together we set off in a Ford <Iforgot> Truck and drove to our trailhead. {{:travelblog:2010_cascade_range:usa_2010_amtl1_003.jpg?800|}} * The hike was a nice start into the course. We had to climb about 3000ft with more and more snow. In the end it got so annoying that we had to put on snoeshoes for the last half kilometer to the camp. * The camp had several intersting features. About 100m "Up" from the camp was the treeline. About 100 m "left" was the <Iforgot> glacier. About 100m "down" was a wooden box. And about 100m "right" was a well. Or whatever you would want to call it. Another group a few days before had dug about 4m into the snow down to a small stream. * After all these cool suprises the rest of the day went rather ordinary. We put up our tents, went on to making Dinner and Alistair tought us leave no trace policy. {{:travelblog:2010_cascade_range:usa_2010_amtl1_009.jpg?800|}} \\ \\ <code> Camping Food Special part 1 - Take 150-250g Pasta depending on your weight and eating habits. - Throw them into a pot and add enough water to cover them. - Heat until the water boils, has boiled for a couple of minutes and the pasta tastes al dente - Throw in 2 eggs and stir as vigirously as you can without spilling everything - Add Salt and Pepper </code> ====== Day 2 ====== * The second day was a classic school day. We all sat down and Alistair/Erin told us numerous thing suntil we fell asleep. NOT. Because we didn't fall asleep. and we didn't sit down. We spent most of the time going up and down a 40something degree snow slope and practicing things like plunge stepping, seated belays, french-, german-, american- and whatever kind of steps as well as some general stuff. * Like using sun screen. LOTS of sunscreen. Every hour. Or more often. {{:travelblog:2010_cascade_range:usa_2010_amtl1_010.jpg?800|}} * Later in the afternoon we added prussiking to our training. Basically that means using a set of "texas prussiks" or "american prussiks" to ascend a rope. Sounds more difficult than it actually is. But its kinda scary at first to just hang of a piece of cord thats friction hitched to a piece of rope. * We also walked to a point above the treeline to see the mountain and talk about Avalanches and Avalanche Danger. And the spot was so nice that we had to come back after dinner so take sunset pictures {{:travelblog:2010_cascade_range:usa_2010_amtl1_016.jpg?800|}}