Gerstle Glacier Trip – Day 3
Our first day on the glacier – everything is new.
The weather turned cooler with a fine mist.
We found out that the ice was granular enough that we had no trouble walking up the glacier without crampons (shoe spikes). We hiked beside the medial moraine between Gerstle Glacier and an unnamed glacier that tumbled down from the mountain peak to the west. The surface of this unnamed glacier was in frozen waves.
This was our first opportunity to see the crevasses in the glacier, with their ice blue color fading to black in the depths. The crevasses close up at around 150 feet because of the pressure of the ice.
At the end of the day, we managed to find a flat spot just off the glacier to set up our tent (altitude ~ 3700 feet.) I climbed up the embankment beside the glacier to get a picture of the tent.
We only made 5 miles that day because we were taking our time.
