For Saturday, Ciprian Lolu prepared something special: a climb up Horoabei Gorge. I’ve read about this place and I was curious and anxious about it. Being winter, we were expecting lots of ice, creating a difficult and treacherous terrain. We were working in teams of 3 again, each of us climbing by ice ax and crampons, with the skis strapped on the back.

The crampons proved useful even before entering the gorge. The forest trail we used was covered in a thick sheet of ice, but with crampons on it felt surprisingly soft and squishy.

The gorge was indeed spectacular. Steep, narrow, wild. Reminded me of Stan’s Valley. Even though everybody was expecting technical climbing, maybe even a few small ice waterfalls, after a warm winter there was very little ice or snow in the gorge. We were using our crampons so we would get accustomed to them and get more experience, but I think it would have been safe even in hiking boots.

We exited the canyon in a wide alpine meadow – the perfect place for a little avalanche rescue training. First Ciprian showed us how to “read the snow” and estimate the avalanche risk. He walked us through the steps of rescuing somebody after an avalanche. Since such things are best learned practicing, we formed two teams. One hid a few transceivers, then the other had to find them. I think that’s very good practice and every serious backcountry skier should try it at least once a year – time is of the essence for avalanche victims. We also had a bit of trolling, with a transceiver hidden on top of a bush. We finally found it after noticing how, the deeper we were digging, the farther the signal was from us.

And for the second time in a row we got caught by the dark. After a very short section on skis we were back walking – again not enough snow. Despite the obvious inconveniences (not being able to see, cold and windy, risk of falling), there’s a weird charm to hiking through the night during winter.

Sunday – our last day for this ski mountaineering school. The plan for the day: climb to Omu Peak, do a couple workshops along the way, then descend on Cerbului Valley. The first part of the climb was on foot – not enough snow. The second part was barely on skis – still not enough snow, but we wanted to get the illusion we were skiing.

We were a large group and our speed wasn’t great. Eventually it became obvious we would be descending down Cerbului by headlamp. So we decided to return to Padina after finishing the day’s workshops.

The first workshop was on pulling somebody up from a crevasse. You needed like a ton of knots and, with my knot knowledge, I was forgetting them right as Ciprian was showing them to us. I was still good at something: hang limply on a rope, while my teammates struggled to pull me up the slope.

The second workshop was a lot awesome-er.  Let’s say you have to ski down a steep slope and the snow is very crappy, making it impossible to turn like you would in fluffy snow. Or you’re in a couloir and you don’t have the space to turn. What do you do? You jump turn! The move is this one. What can I say… It’s scary and it takes a lot of guts to have a steep slope in front of you, to lean into it and then jump in. Needed a while to build up the courage to try it and I think I landed a few correctly, but I also failed a lot. And I’m still terrified at the idea. It’s something I will have to practice a lot.

This jump turn workshop was the end of a pretty cool weekend. Didn’t have a lot of snow, but we got what we came there for: experience working on technical terrain, Ciprian’s knowledge, alpine winter landscapes and a little skiing.