For many, mountaineering has an irresistible allure. Although I’ve trekked to high altitudes, I’ve always wanted to be this close to a glacier, to reach a mountain peak, to understand what lures climbers again and again.

I decided to join Yamnuska, one of the top mountaineering schools in North America, on their Introduction to Mountaineering course. Operated in the Canadian Rockies, the intensive mountaineering instruction course provides a grounding in alpine mountaineering: climbing on snow, ice, rock & mixed terrain, glacier travel, crevasse rescue & navigation.

The course starts with a hike to Bow Hut, located at 7,700 feet on a shoulder next to Bow Glacier. Although only a six kilometre trek, the climb is 2,000 feet with stream crossings, forest traverses and rock scrambles over boulder fields. We trek this carefully, balancing our packs loaded with gear, trying not to squish some delicate food items like tortilla chips, fresh buns, and tomatoes.

We share the hut, which sleeps 38, with several other groups, including a team of young cadets. The hut serves as our base for gear storage and food preparation but the mountains are the schoolhouse. At the foot of the glacier, nestled between several peaks, our base provides easy access to prime instruction terrain and the perfect spot every evening for us to soak in the mountains and the Wapta Icefields.

Each night I watch the sun catch the tip of a mountain peak, a chimney to the sky. To its right a waterfall runs silent against the wind, the glacier creeping toward the sun. The exposed rock is barren, grey and rusty with only a few splashes of colour where small alpine flowers, like yellow pockets of sunshine, are tucked into protected coves. By the end of my brief stay, the mountains had already become familiar.

The first day we hurl ourselves down a steep slope, hoping our ice axe will stop us. When mountaineering, the best safety measure is not to fall, but if it happens, it’s best to stop yourself as soon as possible while still on a snow covered slope before reaching a cliff or a short run-out filled with rocks. We practice these ice axe arrests in various positions: on our backs, feet first, then headfirst; on our stomachs, face first, snow spraying into our mouths. Even with these skills there are still the dangers of sliding down hard snow, knocking off knee caps or pulling out a shoulder. This sobering information leads us into the next lesson: breaking a fellow climber’s fall. We realize we are all dependent on each other here, strangers tied to a rope, where one fall can cause another.

We cover all other basics for climbing - glacial features, knot tying, crampon travel, holding a fellow climber from slipping farther in the snow. “It’s all about judgement and putting your skills in effect,” says our guide, Steve. “As experience grows, so does your comfort level.”

This is clear the following day during our first climb. Confidence levels drop as we near the 3,053 metre summit to Mount Gordon, lungs tired, feet blistered, thirsty from few refreshment breaks.

During our ascent we meet the army cadets descending, shirts tied around their heads to block the sun, one almost bare chested. Whenever we complain of being tired, we’re reminded that the army guys summited earlier that morning in three hours. For the men in our team this is fuel to pick up the pace, but most of the women remain neutral with this information. We have been told to pace ourselves slow and steady to conserve energy. This isn’t hard to do, since whenever we start up after a rest break, we can only slog ahead as if our ankles are bound in chains.

An hour before reaching the summit, I fall into a crevasse up to my knees. “Falling to your waist is common,” Steve tells me as I pull myself out. I am the first one to do this, a mark of passage toward becoming a mountaineer. But nothing comes close to the exhiliration of reaching your first summit. Standing at the top of a mountain and seeing one mountain fold into another. I want to stay up here for hours but there is little time for such reflection when mountaineering. It seems a shame to trudge all that way and spend little time at the top, but weather on a mountain top changes suddenly and below us, the sun warms the glacier till it drips and runs, melting snow bridges.

Hunger also beckons a descent. We are all elated yet tired, and the thought of food, hastens our return. One of the members in our climb team has a GPS and calculates our average speed to the summit at 0.8 km/hr. Not surprisingly, our average return speed is higher at 1.1 km/hr.

That evening we learn someone else craves our food – the pack rat. The door to the kitchen is closed tightly at all times to keep him out, and once in a while, usually when heading to the outhouse in the middle of the night, you can see the edge of his snout behind a board or hear his claws scraping the edge of the wooden floor as he vanishes from your headlight.

The rest of the six-day course alternates between skill development on the glacier near the hut and more mountain summits where various skills are put into practice real-time: travelling diagonally in crevasse crossings, navigating a jagged route through snow bridges, breaking someone’s fall and pulling them out.

I’m glad I read Mountaineering, the Freedom of the Hills before the course, so some of these terms and concepts are familiar to me. Doing a hands-on course like this in the field and covering everything from prussik climbing to T-slot and snow stake anchors, can cause information overload.

By far the one skill that no amount of reading will prepare you for is crevasse rescue. You are lowered into a deep crevasse and attemp to prussik climb out, or wait for your team members to pull you up. After I get over the initial jolt of descending, I enter a world of fading shades of blue, shapes that resemble fountains and waterfalls, long corridors that beckon me to jump out of my harness and explore.

One of the main benefits of this type of course is the comfort level you develop. Above the explosive crack and hiss as shelves of snow tumble from a nearby mountainside, you also hear water flowing beneath a crevasse you are crossing, realizing that you are aware of its dangers, but also know the mystery of its beauty.