Words and Photos from Mali Noyes
There are a lot of pieces that go into preparing for a winter expedition. There are the obvious things, like logistics and gear packing, but there are also the tricky details of meal planning, weather tracking, and building out a medical kit. Or the hard-to-measure but very important process of being both physically and mentally prepared for a long and remote trip. For me, prepping for an expedition requires a lot of lists, overthinking everything, and being ready for as much as I can–while knowing I will never be fully prepared.
PHYSICAL PREPARATION
Being physically fit for your objective is super important, not only for safety and increasing your chances for success, but it also makes the trip that much more enjoyable. Working on this element starts months before the trip. When I think of fitness, I think about it in two parts: 1 - the base fitness of endurance and 2 - specificity for the objective. Expeditions usually require a lot of physical activity just to survive and live in the harsh climate. It takes work to get snow and make water or to pack up and move camps. This all requires a solid base of being comfortable moving and working all day. I build this through the season by going for long and easy ski tours. It doesn't feel like much, but with consistency and doing it over a few months, it adds up.
The second part I work on is specificity. I look at my objective–say it's spending multiple days getting to the base, pulling and carrying all our gear, and then once at the base, we have to bootpack up 6,000 feet to the top of our objective. For this trip, I would intentionally ski tour a few days a week with a heavy pack, sometimes making it the same pack and weight that I will be carrying on the trip. One month before the trip, I would be trying to bootpack as much as possible, making a 6,000-foot day of bootpacking comfortable and familiar.
MENTAL PREPARATION
Mental preparation can be both abstract and overlooked. But as someone who likes to think literally and who has made the mistake of not mentally preparing, I have come up with a system that seems to work. I look at my weaknesses–weaknesses in skills, team dynamics, and intrapersonal fears and how they align with the trip. Once I've identified these weaknesses, I start working on them–practicing them, repeating them, and building my confidence around them. For example, if the expedition is going to have a lot of steep skiing and I think I'm bad at steep hop turns, I'm going to go ski a lot of steep slopes. Or if there is going to be a lot of glacier navigation, I'm going to get really good at my cravass rescue.
However, improving skills is an easy example. What about those more abstract, harder-to-overcome intrapersonal weaknesses, such as a lack of confidence? For me, my confidence, or lack thereof, is often the biggest hole in my armor. I can have all the skills and knowledge, but without confidence, I'm too afraid to move forward and ski or climb to my ability. For this, I work on gradual voluntary exposure, building myself up slowly by pushing my limits, without over-pushing them, and through intentional repetition, convincing my brain that I am prepared. Mostly this just comes back to my skills and physical training. Back to going skiing every day I can, increasing my experience and exposure, and through that, slowly increasing my confidence as I get familiar, as I learn what I don't know and what I do, and as I become competent and fluent in my skills.
GEAR
The gear for a trip is where I spend the most time overthinking. The specifics of what tent, what sleeping bag, and what pack, are different for each trip. You want to bring what you need without bringing too much. I have a spreadsheet that I go through before each trip–it's very detailed and has everything I could need. First, I go through and remove what I don't need for this specific trip. Is it a base camp trip? Then we won't need sleds to haul gear and we can bring the nicer bigger stove.
The list is also broken down into group gear and individual gear. This is the point in the prepping process where you get to overthink every detail and work to optimize the best you can. I find it really important and helpful to test my gear before the trip. This not only ensures that I bring gear that works and I know how to use it, but it also helps me decide what gear to bring. For example, for the backpack I'm bringing on the trip–will the Porter pack fit everything I need, and is it comfortable when it's fully packed and on my back for hours? Or does the Crux 40 pack fit all the gear for summit day, and on the 6,000ft bootpack, does it carry my skis in a way that still allows me to climb and move but is comfortable for that long of an ascent? Yep, go test it. It's better to find the flaws, solve the flaws, or try a new system than to be stuck with something that doesn't work. And why not optimize?
FOOD
Planning and packing the food is probably my favorite and least favorite part of packing for an expedition. It requires spreadsheets, overthinking details, and knowing you will never get it right. When planning my meals, I keep these three things in mind: 1: Keep it simple, but 2: Shave a little variety, and 3: Pick meals and food that can freeze. Don't bring cream cheese–it's going to freeze solid, and you will never be able to use it, or fresh fruit or vegetables–they will just freeze, go bad, and then you just have extra trash to carry around.
MEDICAL KIT
In addition to being a skier, I'm also a nurse. So I'm usually tasked with the responsibility of building and bringing the medical kit. You will never be able to have everything you need, so instead, I will try to pack the essentials that can be used in multiple situations or come in handy in remote areas. This includes a tourniquet (a strong one, not a cheap one from Amazon), tenacious tape (for blisters or whatever else), a small ace bandage and extra-strength acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Hard narcotics can be scary to use and hard to get, but using both acetaminophen and ibuprofen (Tylenol and Advil) can work pretty well. They work on different pain pathways and are processed through different organs, meaning that together, they have a synergetic effect, offer greater pain relief, and are safe to take together. For other meds, I try to pick the ones I'm more likely to need, such as high-altitude rescue drugs if we are going on a trip to higher altitudes or antihistamines if someone on the trip is allergic to something.
This is also a great time to do some refreshing on possible medical conditions you might encounter. You won't have the internet out there, so take advantage of it before you leave. For example, before going to high altitude, I like to refresh my knowledge of high altitude illnesses, such as HAPE and HACE, and make sure I understand the signs and symptoms and what treatment or preventative options I will have.
RESEARCH
The research for a trip is like doing your homework or studying for a test, you could wing it and just hope you can figure it out in the moment to get by, but why? Before a trip I spend a lot of time on Google Earth, zooming around and getting familiar with the terrain we will be traveling in. This is fun; this is where you get to dream big and get sucked into seeing if this line goes or if you can link this drainage to that drainage. This then leads to reading trip reports and reaching out to others for beta on the area–what has been done? What else can be done? What little pieces of info can you glean that might help steer your trip or objectives?
Since we are in the mountains and skiing, snow and weather are important things to try and get familiar with. Big emphasis on "try" because you will never know until you get out there, but you can do your best to understand the snowpack through weather and snow tracking in the months and weeks leading up to the trip. Knowing if the area had a drought for a few weeks, rained at high elevations, or got super cold can all be helpful data points in "trying" to understand the snowpack.
