Yesterday, I took a scouting and training run up to the ice with the guides and I'm happy to report that the glacier is open for tours for the season! We have a great early-season route set up and there are some pretty awesome visuals out there this year. The margins of the ice have some really large ice formations that grew over the winter, and I have a feeling that there is going to be a ton of water moving in rivers and streams out there this season.
On the glacier, when water moves across the surface, it carves valleys into the ice that form amazing, sinuous rivers on the glacier's surface. Often times, the water will end up crossing paths with a crevasse or a hole in the ice. When this happens, the water falls into the body of the ice and carves out large shafts called moulins. The moulins are typically composed of dense, bright blue ice, and if the water is diverted away from them later in the season, they create some of the best ice climbing walls that can be found on a glacier.
Speaking of ice climbing, we're also running our first climbing trip today, which is cool, because usually we can't run those trips until later in the season when the glacier has had more time to develop in the warm weather. This year, we have some excellent walls and crevasses that are holdovers from last season, so we're pretty excited to get people out there and vertical so early in the season.
Here's to summer, 2011!