CREVASSE RESCUE: THE SYSTEM AND WHAT IT DEMANDS

The Technique

1. The first thirty seconds decide a lot, and almost all of it is about not making a second casualty. When someone goes in, the party stops where it is. Nobody rides forward. Nobody runs to the hole. The surface that just failed is unlikely to have failed only in one place, and the ground beside a fresh hole is the least trustworthy ground on the glacier. Mark the hole from a distance so it stays findable, note the exact position, and get the party organised on ground you have reason to trust. Then approach only in a protected way: from a direction that has been probed, belayed from a solid anchor, lying flat to spread load, and never with more than one person committed at a time. The instinct to sprint to the edge is strong and it has killed rescuers.
2. Establish communication immediately, because everything downstream depends on it. Shout, listen, and if there is no answer, keep trying while the rest of the response continues. If there is an answer, ask specific closed questions rather than open ones: are you hurt, where, can you move your arms, can you stand or take weight on anything, are you on a floor or hanging, is there water, can you see the sky. Tell them what is happening and keep telling them, because a person in a crevasse cannot see the party and will assume the worst. That information changes everything about the plan. Someone standing on a solid snow floor a couple of metres down is a different problem from someone hanging free, and someone unconscious is a different problem again and a far worse one.
3. Assess the position before you commit to a method. How deep, and against which wall. Whether the casualty is resting on a lower bridge that could give way and drop them further during the rescue. Where the machine is, and whether it is above them, wedged, or likely to shift when you load the snow. Whether there is meltwater, which changes the time you have from hours to a much shorter number. Whether the lip overhangs. Whether the fastest option is actually for the casualty to climb, walk along a floor to a shallower point, or be lowered slightly to a ledge rather than hauled. Self-rescue by an uninjured casualty is usually the quickest way out, and it should be considered before anyone starts building a hauling system.
4. Anchors come next, and this is one of the places where a written lesson stops being useful. In snow, anchors include a driven or buried picket, a buried deadman such as a picket, ski, board, probe or pack set in a T-slot, and a snow bollard. In ice, they include ice screws and threads. What matters is that a snow anchor's strength is invisible: two anchors that look identical from above can differ by an enormous margin depending on how the slot was cut, how the snow was compacted, how the cable or sling exits, how deep it sits, and what the snowpack is like that day. That knowledge is transferred by a qualified instructor putting hands on your work and telling you it is wrong. Build anchors well back from the lip, back them up, and load them in the direction they will actually be pulled.
5. Hauling works on mechanical advantage, and the principle is straightforward even though the execution is not. By running the rope through turns at the anchor and at the load, you trade rope travel for force, so pulling several metres of rope moves the casualty one metre but requires less force from you. Systems in common use range from a simple pull with the casualty on one strand, through a drop loop that gives advantage from the casualty's side, to a three to one and higher. Every system needs progress capture, meaning a device or friction hitch that holds what you have gained while you reset, because without it any pause loses everything. And every system loses a large amount of its theoretical advantage to friction, particularly at the lip, so the numbers on paper are optimistic in the way that matters least when you are tired.
6. The lip is the hardest part of every crevasse rescue, and knowing that in advance is worth a lot. Under load, the rope saws down into the snow at the edge and buries itself in a deepening trench, which adds friction, wastes your advantage, and eventually means you are hauling the rope through snow rather than lifting a person. The standard answer is to pad the edge, sliding a pack, ski, board, probe or pole under the rope so it runs over a surface instead of into the snow, and to do that before you start hauling rather than after the trench forms. Then there is the casualty themselves, who arrives at the lip pressed against an overhanging wall of snow and ice and has to be brought up and over it, often unable to help. Hauls that were moving steadily stall at the lip. Plan for that moment specifically.
7. Time is the enemy and it moves faster than people expect. A crevasse is cold, often wet, and out of the sun, and the walls conduct heat out of a body in contact with them. A casualty who is wet, injured or lightly dressed loses heat quickly and loses the ability to help with their own rescue before they look obviously bad. Hanging in a harness adds its own danger: a person suspended and unable to take weight on their legs can deteriorate, and getting weight onto a foot loop, a ledge or anything at all is important. Add the injuries from the fall itself, and the picture is a casualty whose condition is worsening on a clock you do not control. A well drilled team that has practised together treats getting the casualty out fast as a medical priority, not a matter of pride.
8. Now the part this lesson exists to make unavoidable. A party without training and without equipment cannot do this. Not slowly, not eventually. If you have no rope you have no rescue at all. If you have a rope but have never built a snow anchor under supervision, you will build a bad one, and a bad anchor under a hauling load produces a second casualty. If you have never rigged a haul with cold wet gloved hands, in wind, with someone shouting from a hole, you will not rig it now. Everything in this system is simple to read and difficult to do, and the difficulty is concentrated in exactly the conditions where you will be using it. That gap between reading and doing is why this lesson is a description of demands, not a set of instructions, and why nothing here should be attempted on the strength of having read it.
9. The equipment a party on glaciated terrain must carry is not optional and is not a subset. As a minimum: a glacier rope suited to the party and route, a harness for every person, locking and non-locking carabiners, pulleys, prusik cord or mechanical devices for progress capture and ascending, snow pickets, ice screws where there is any ice, slings, an ice axe, and a shovel and probe for every person. Add the casualty care side, which people forget: insulation, a casualty bag or group shelter, spare warm layers, a first aid kit, and a headtorch each. Add communications and a way to summon outside help, which in remote country means a satellite communicator or beacon and a plan for who you are calling and what you will tell them. And add the item that is not equipment at all: a party that has trained together, practised this system together, and knows where every piece of it is stowed.

Common Mistakes

Running to the edge to look. Fix: stop the party, mark the hole from a distance, and approach only probed, belayed, spread flat and one person at a time.

• Building a hauling system before establishing communication. Fix: talk to the casualty first. Their answers may mean they can climb out, or may mean you need help on the way immediately.
• Anchoring too close to the lip or trusting a single snow anchor. Fix: set anchors well back, back them up, and get your anchor building checked in person by a qualified instructor before you ever need one.
• Starting the haul without padding the edge. Fix: pad the lip before the first pull, because once the rope has cut a trench you are fighting friction you created.
• Carrying rescue gear the party has never used together. Fix: practise the whole sequence as a group, in gloves, with the exact kit you carry, until every person can do every role.

The Drill

On safe, flat, non-glaciated ground with a small bank or a fixed structure to work against, and with a qualified instructor present, run the full sequence as a timed rehearsal. Build a buried snow anchor, back it up, pad the edge, rig a hauling system with progress capture, and raise a loaded pack or a person's weight over the edge. Everyone does it, not just the confident one. The standard is that each member of the party can build the anchor and have the system hauling within ten minutes, in gloves, twice in a row, without being talked through it. Then repeat with one person removed from the group, because in a real event the strongest member may be the one in the hole.

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