On the second day we ascended probably only 500 vertical feet, to a broad snow-covered bowl with a vey long runout (a very long gently-sloping area on which we could slide and know that we would eventually stop, even if we did nothing). Here, we practiced self-arrest; using our feet and an ice axe and to stop ourselves from sliding. We would need this technique if we fell while climbing and began sliding down a mountain. Climbing lore is full of stories of poeple falling, sliding, not knowing how to stop themselves (or being on bad snow and not being able to stop themselves) and getting severely injured or killed by hitting rocks or sliding over the edge of a cliff.

The proper position for self-arrest is stomach facing the snow, feet downhill, the ice axe head between your shoulder and neck, and the ice axe shaft across your chest. You then arch your back. This pushes your feet and one shoulder (the one where the ice axe head is) into the snow and stops you, if you do it well and the snow is neither so soft that you just plow through or so hard that you cannot get much friction on it.

First, we all practiced stopping as I just described it. After we had developed some competence at this, we practiced getting into this stopping position from the other three positions: head downhill with our stomachs on the snow, head uphill with our backs on the snow, and head downhill with our stomachs on snow. The procedures for getting into the correct position from these variations all rely on some combination of rolling, dragging the ice axe head in the snow, and pivoting our legs. The exact sequence varies depending on which position you start off in, but is designed to do three things: get you into stopping position as quickly as possible, minimize the chance of beginning to tumble (a very bad thing), and minimize the chance of stabbing yourself with your ice axe head (also a very bad thing).

Stopping from the standard position was relatively trouble-free and easy, given the just-right snow conditions we had that day; neither too soft nor too hard. The biggest inconvenience was occasionally getting a wad of snow pushed up inside our jackets. Stopping from the other three positions is not quite as easy. The head-downhill, back on the snow position was particularly disquieting for two reasons. First, because you start off head-first and unable to see what (if anything) your head might bang into. Second, it requires the most elaborate sequence of moves to get into the correct stopping position, so there was more of a chance to get it wrong.

We headed back to base camp after several hours of practicing. We spent the evening preparing prussiks and getting our first brief prussiking experience. I'll explain prussiks in more detail in the description of crevasse rescue. For now it suffices to say that they are simple devices that are used to climbout of crevasses. They need to be custom-fitted to each person's height. So, we spent our evening fitting them and trying them out by climbing up 10 feet (3 meters) or so into the air on a rope suspended between trees in our base camp.