MSA Course April 16th - 19th 2022

 I took a 4 day course with Mountain Skills Academy with two days being dedicated to Crevasse Rescue and two days being dedicated to Intro to Mountaineering but in reality all four days were a mix of the two topics.

The trip started with me driving out to Squamish on Friday night and camping

Me on the bridge at the top of Sea to Sky

My crappy wet tent situation

Everyone except me and the guide in this one

at the Mamquam River Campground. In the morning I woke up and met up with my group in the Smoke Bluffs parking lot at 8:15. There were 6 people including myself and one guide. The six were Todd - from Coquitlam, Gabby - from Quebec but working in Prince George, Paul from Montana, Tahia from Seattle and Andrei from Seattle. After we all met our guide showed up, his name was Eliel and he was a Quebec native but had lived in BC and the Yukon for 15+ years.

We started by walking a short bit and finding our way to the top of a small 30 foot crag just off the trail. We went over gear, a bit of planning and then dove in to rope basics. Eliel showed us how to tie a few different knots, some of which I knew already (figure 8, overhand, clove hitch) and a few which I didn't (munter, alpine angel). Then we practiced rapelling using a prussik and a belay method of our choice (a lot of people used the Munter and I mostly used my ATC guide).

After lunch we practiced ascending the rope using a progress capture device (ATC Guide in my case) and a prussik and then wrapped up the day learning how to set up a 2:1, 3:1 (Canadian Drop Loop), 4:1 and 5:1 pulley system to rescue someone. We finished around 5 and the six students went to a local bar for a quick pint before going our separate ways.

Day 2 started at 8:30 at the Smoke Bluffs parking lot again and then quickly making our way to Brennan Park. There we sat outside at a picnic table for a bit before moving inside and we went over how to use a topographic map as well as morphology of a glacier. Around 11 we went out on the field and learned how to choose distances between party members depending on number of members and conditions and then we practiced doing that.

After lunch we went back to the cliff we had been at Day 1 and practiced rapelling and switching to ascending while in the air (very useful) and ended the day learning how to pass a knot trough a belay using releasable Prussik (complicated, need to practice). We ended around 5 again and decided we were going up the Sea to Sky gondola the next morning for our real mountaineering and we would meet there. I drove to New West to meet my family for Easter dinner.

On the morning of day 3 we met at the Sea to Sky gondola parking lot at 8:30 and it was raining quite a bit. My gear wasn't as fancy as everyone else and I knew I would get wet but oh well. We headed up the gondola and went in to the lodge where Eliel went over the details of crampons, ice axes and showed us how to use them well.

About 11 we headed out to find some snow and quickly did. We put on our crampons and found a nice slope where we learned how to make snow anchors (ice axe, picket, T-slots, snow bollard) and then we practiced all our skills by going up and down a slope in two pitches. That was a lot of fun as I felt it was very practical.

When we came down around 5 I was pretty soaked and it was still pouring. I had to set up my tent again in the rain and it was miserable to say the least.

The last day we met again at the gondola and headed up and quickly out this time. We found a different snow slope and practiced glissading and self arrest in a variety of positions. This was fun but it got me very wet and my feet were absolutely soaked.

We wrapped up the day by doing a full rescue situation and sending people over the edge of a cliff in groups of 3 and pulling them back up. This was a lot of fun and took a while but really combined all of the skills we had learned. We headed down and had a beer at the A-Frame before going our separate ways.

All in all I think it was a very useful course. I learned a ton of rope skills that I think are very useful and I really want to practice them to make sure I don't lose them and get on some bigger objectives.