It brings a lark to your hand

I guess I’m taking a glacier travel and rescue course from the local mountaineering organization. I feel in my soul that the experience will, in the end, be worthwhile, but the place grates on me so. Here’s why, after the first course meeting:

• Glacier Travel and crevasse rescue. The whole point of the damn business is to stay out of crevasses in the first place. Routefinding skills are the reason I’m taking the class, not rescue. I can teach myself rescue techniques – all it takes is discipline and practice. What I can’t duplicate is the art of ferreting out zones of safety and danger in an unfamiliar and fabulous environment. I don’t take courses to learn to follow. I take classes to learn.
• Stop treating me like I’m anything other than an intensely motivated, smart, and highly skilled scientist and outdoorsman. It may be an unreasonable expectation, but that’s who I am. I will comprehend what you say quickly. I’ll challenge what you have to say if it confuses me – and that’s a compliment, just back it up. These are our lives we’re chatting about here, don’t patronize.
• I’ll learn and implement a Garda hitch if it saves me a pound.
• Are you really requiring belay devices as a prussik minding tool? That’s what prussik-minding pulleys are for. The REI blue pulley is a piece of crap. If I need to rappel, I’ll build a carabiner brake or just twist my rope up with a Munter.
• You’re not using the alpine butterfly simply because it’s challenging to learn? Figure-eights invert when used as a middle tie in. I agree that they’re probably safe to use, but how hard is it to learn a useful knot?
• How hard is it to obtain equivalency for a 6-8 hour avalanche awareness course? It’s impossible to ski as much as I do without having become aware of stability questions at that ability level. This one really hacks me off. Trust is a two way street – I’m trusting you to teach me skills that make sense. Believe a little of what I’m bringing to the table. Is it really going to cost me $40, an evening, and half of a weekend day to prove that I do, indeed, have half a wit about stability?
• Growr. I’d heard good things about the folks that teach this course being less like the larger body of their organization. I still believe them. A cloud of doubt, however, seems to be on the horizon.

When I left the class tonight, my internal dialog said: I go to the mountains to go where the only rules are the only rules. Please help me find that place, not bind me with limitations.

I can’t wait for the latter parts of the course. It’ll be worthwhile and enjoyable. To the patient go the spoils (until the doctor sends the bill).

The spoils.