Who would purposely walk into a crevasse? I know about ten people that did.
We roped up into groups of three and took turns being the front, middle, and back person. Each position along the rope has different responsibilities when a fall first occurs. The front person's job is, obviously, to fall into a hole. In reality you don't usually just fall in to a crevasse. You normally slide into a hole the size of you and your equipment as you would sink into a pool of quicksand, but more quickly. If you can you should put your arms straight out from you body to try and keep yourself from going all of the way through the hole. Of course, if the snow bridge you are standing on shatters and collapses into the abyss you're going down like Wiley E. Coyote, and you need to concentrate on not smashing into the side of the crevasse and breaking something you may need later.
The middle person must react quickly to try and pull the front person back to prevent them from falling, or keep them from falling very far as best they can. That was what Bruce Long was doing in the picture above. The ice axe gets planted into the snow as you drop down and plant your feet, and a small rope that is attached to the main rope, called a prussik, is placed around the ice axe using it as an anchor. Once the first anchor is in place additional ones are set and recovery can begin, or you can break for lunch if you don't get along all that well with the person left hanging in the crevasse.
The back person's job is to plant themselves in the snow and help by pulling on the main rope while the middle person gets the first anchors set up.
You wouldn't normally run to the edge of the crevasse to see how the first person is doing without being attached to something in a real situation, for fear of more of the snow opening up and swallowing more people, but we seemed to be a curious lot.
Once everything is stable various pulley systems can be made from the equipment in a crevasse rescue bag (don't leave home without one) to give the remaining two people enough leverage to haul the first person back to the edge of the crevasse.
As Ash pulls on the rope we begin to see Andy Smith's head pop up.
The view just kept getting better and better.
2018-03-05