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Already my fear of the technical side o f DAy TWO: Base Camp to Glacier Camp We made two intense trips to our glacier camp, which was around four miles from base camp. This involved stuffing my pack as heavy as I ever have, maybe 50 pounds, twice, then maneuvering over unstab le boulders, slippery brush, and crunchy glacial ice, only t o set up camp on a glacier. Not near a glacier, on a glacier. Even in Alaska, this activity elicits a strange sensation in August. And somehow, sweating and shivering at the same time, the moment this mammoth task had been accomplished I realized that every second o f effort was worth it. Here's why : Under my feet radiated the magical blue of ice pressed s o tightly together that no other color's wavelength could escape . Next t o me the freshest water in the world was born after 15,000 years as ice. And as I l ooked t o the s outh, the water collected in creeks along the velvety green o f the late summer Chilkat v alley bel ow, running 40 miles past Haines t o the salt water where the salmon and whales live. I was standing in the place Where It All Begins. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me t o focus on the life-saving mountaineering skills I was ~---- here t o learn, and not on the stunning beauty of the For example, I had t o force to pay attention t o Eli's on sinking ice screws when a rainbow the si ze o f Vermont opened on the ridge behind us . When I was supposed t o be atuned t o every crampon step- a matter of life and death in the steep terrain-I noticed a family of ptarmigan foraging on the nearby moraine. mountaineering was dissipating. All three of u s r ookies were relatively close in skill level. We got along well, t oo , which was lucky-remarkable even, considering we lived, wet and increasingly smelly, in the same tent for several days. Tal, in between telling stories o f serving as part of Israel's securi ty corps one summer, proved t o be one o f the planet's gentlest spirits. And Michael, a 41-year-old acc ountant from 100-degree Phoenix, if a little slower than the rest of the group, was the most inspiring due t o his determination . And he didn't whine about the we ather once . Ok ay, maybe once. The only thing that worried me at this point was the shall we say, "dynamic " quality of the earth around the c ampsite we had chosen. ~ock slides from the shifting glacier under us occurred about once every half hour, s ome o f them unner;vingly close. At one point, while we chatted after setting up the cook tent, Cedar and I watched a massive calving cleave o ff the t op of two great blue spires near the glacier's peak ; it exploded in a rumbling r o ar about 100 yards away. "How are Alaska Mountain Guides' liability insurance rates?" I asked, wondering how b inding that "release form" was I had signed back in Haines. "Pretty high, I imagine," Cedar said, knocking in a tent stake. We t ook t o wearing our helmets pretty much everywhere, even at meals. Tal even suggested fetching them t o the tent one night when a nearby rock-and- ice slide woke and frightened us all. But I knew how the earth felt, and I empathized with it: As a human, I'm constantly readjusting too . My first thought upon waking on Day Three: "Ab , good, more rain. Most places in the world are short o f water. " But Sipping cocoa at 4, 500 feet in a heart breakingly blue landscape cured any incipient whining, which is frowned upon in the 3 Petzl Corax harness Petll Elios helmet DAY THREE: Glacier Camp 48