Climbing With The Guys: Trial By Fire and Ice

I might not have the same technical background as the guys, he said, but I had something special. "You really have a way with people," he assured me.

Most of the classes I have taken through the University of Oregon's outdoor program have been male-dominated, but this was the first time I was the sole girl on a weekend adventure. Like many other sports, ice climbing has been ruled by men, but women get their picks into the ice, too. Chicks With Picks in Ouray, Colo., teaches women how to climb while raising money for local women's shelters. So I am not the only woman who wants to venture into the sport, but sitting in the van, I worried. Did everyone expect me to bake cookies and smell like flowers? Or did they expect me to break wind and belch?

Arriving at the Three Sisters Wilderness entrance, we start out with a six-mile hike to our base camp. The forest trail looks dusty under the filtered sun. My backpack weighs as much as a teenage person, but I am able to keep up with the fellas.

At the base camp, there is a thin layer of white on the earth, and our fingers freeze as more snow falls. We shiver through a short lesson on rescue systems and then crawl into our sleeping bags as the tents flap wildly against the wind.

I mention to my tent partner, Jacob, that I need to change my underwear.

"You brought a spare pair?" he asks, as if I had told him I'd brought a toaster.

At 7:30 the next morning, we hike up the Middle Sister to the Diller Glacier at 7,500 feet. The sun is bright as we peer into the caverns of the crevasse. The climbing begins after we build our anchors.

Jacob is my climbing buddy for the day.

"You smell like a barnyard animal," I say.

"You snore like a barnyard animal," he replies.

He lowers me into the crevasse, then calls over the edge to tell me I'm doing great, to just put my heels down and nail the wall harder.

"My pick is stuck," I yell as I pull at the head of my tool. "And now the spike is stuck."