September 21st So why exactly are we roped together like school children? The simple answer is safety and the more complicated one is crevasse rescue. Today we did mock rescues and we basically use the team to self arrest and the pull them out tug-of-war style with one person trying to make sure the downed individual doesn't smack their head on the way up.

Here's my somber journal entry from the day "I'm living in a place where the bug dig their own graves. You can see where the sun's heat has warmed it's still body and it's sunk into the snow. It's amazing that there are still bugs and birds up here at 14.5 thousand feet."

September 22nd We packed up camp today and moved to camp 2, it was a long, uphill trek and it seemed like the snow steps were getting larger and larger as my knees went from comfortable to my calves nearly hitting my thighs as I grappled the snow with my hands to pull myself up the giant steps. All of this, mind you, with a heavy pack. After reaching our camp finally, I set up the tent while a few others took time to create a masterful communal kitchen, round-table style in the snow. While they finished up, I had my first attempt to make a water still so we wouldn't have to use stove time to melt snow.

September 23rd Still no rest day as we make the hike back to our cache while a team of four goes forward to break trail to our cache for camp 3. I led our rope team today for the first time and had KG as our instructor hanging out at the end of the line. It was an awesome day! KG has awesome and entertaining stories from past expeditions, covering NOLS and the world. I found out later in the course that he is a legend for the field staff, having worked for NOLS for somewhere around 15 years. Other staff are stoked just to meet the man, much less work with him.

September 24th We pack up everything we had just picked up yesterday and, you guessed it!, moved that to the new cache for camp 3. They set up the cache yesterday well before our camp since there's a gigantic, steep pass in between. We'll have to tackle that tomorrow... Today, since the trail was already broken, we made it there and back pretty easily, but this is our third day straight with heavy packs and it's starting to wear me down especially with no end in sight.