Climbing the ice cube

What in the world does walking around on Mainland-Europe's largest piece of ice have to do with being an international student? I will tell you that! But first of all you need to know what glaciering is. Glaciering, as the name suggests, is the act of being on a glacier. Surprisingly, this is not as suicidal as it sounds. As long as you just work in a team and look out for each other. So when I and 7 of my co-students left the college in early October to spend a week on the majestic Jostedal glacier, what we really had coming our way was an experience of team work.

A glacier is alive. It moves all the time, leaving deep cracks that look like they can swallow you if you just make one wrong step. Therefore it is beneficial to take precautions by tying yourselves into groups connected with climbing rope. This way, if one person falls the rest of the team can act as a lifeline. This method of maneuvering takes enormous amounts of concentration and teamwork since the rope must be stretched and everyone must be able to stop a falling teammate at any time. This only gets harder when moving around on the rough, wavy ice.

So in the evenings we were all exhausted and happy to return to our little cabin on the mountain next to the glacier, cut-off from everything that resembled civilization. We spend the evenings keeping the fires alive, talking about the eventful days, and listening to our guides telling horror stories about what happens when you do not cooperate on a glacier. Cooking was done over fire, light was provided by torches, and the toilet was a small shed on the side of a cliff with a wooden bench that had a hole in it.

So when the week was over, we were all happy to come back home for a nice warm shower and a night of sleep in our own beds. I learned a lot from that week, way more than I can fit into a page on this blog. I had a chance to learn about my own endurance on the sides of the Norwegian mountains, I saw the beauty of this endangered nature while top-roping 20 meters down on ice, I experienced the feeling of standing on top of a mountain in the icy wind with no shirt on next to my glaciering-bodies. But one of the most important lessons was about teamwork. When you are forced to work together with other people that are very different from you in a situation that is new to everyone, you lean a lot about the mechanics of teamwork and the importance trust. Because you do not get anywhere on a glacier (or in life) without those two things; teamwork and trust.