In mid-April, 12 students and two teachers from Bow Valley High School (BVHS) set out on a three-day trip that no other Canadian high school students usually take - camping in the Saskatchewan Glacier.
Day two of the trip, while not particularly the coldest that the Alberta icefield area had been this year, was certainly one of the snowiest.
The group was making their way up from the base of the glacier to the top in hopes of getting a glimpse of the Columbia Ice fields below. That's when they were met by a wall of white - snow falling so fast they could only see one or two people ahead of them in their single file pattern.
It was only a matter of time before they had to turn back.
"We started skiing up in the morning and then it just kind of went whiteout on us," Santana Shukin recalled.
"Every step you took you didn't know what you were taking," Austin Javorsky said. "Our guide had to get this rope and throw it in front of us just to make sure there weren't any crevasses in front of us."
"It felt a lot longer than it was because you can't see where you're going so you feel like you're just going nowhere, which is a hard part to get around," Harry Carter said.
The trip was part of Bow Valley’s Outdoor Leadership program which aims to get kids outdoors, aware of their natural environment and how to navigate it.
It was the third time BVHS students had made the trip, though the school touts that no other high school in Canada has. They were geared with tents, cooking pots, sleeping bags and skis among other equipment. The students recalled having to build walls of snow to block the wind while they cooked and slept.
Though the group didn't make it to the top this time, it was a practical lesson in glaciers that teacher Scott Thompson, who heads the program, said you can't get in a classroom.
"There's something very powerful about place-based learning. So I'm in the spot I'm in that space, that does something very significant for kids and for adults," Thompson said.
"You can talk about glaciers, you can talk about climate change but it's not until you're on one where you go 'oh, this is what we're talking about."
Thompson said the students were able to see the shift the glacier has made in the last 30 years and since the last ice age by physically navigating the area.
"We're losing like 15 metres of the Saskatchewan Glacier every year and it's slowly getting smaller and smaller," Javorsky said.
The students also gained an understanding of watersheds and how one water system can affect another downstream.
Most of the students on the trip were in Grade 11 or 12 and all of them had been in the program since starting high school.
Sadie Popoff said the program has sparked her interest in ecotourism and she will be studying precisely that at Thompson Rivers University after graduating.
"On one of our last Grade 12 outdoor leadership (meetings) we were kind of talking about what (outdoor leadership) meant to all of us and I think not many people have the opportunity to do this and this is what we'll look back on and remember," Popoff said.
