More than your typical outdoor experience
Girls on Ice is a unique, FREE, wilderness science education program for high school girls that takes place in the North Cascades in Washington state. Each year a team of 9 teenage girls and 3 instructors spend 11 days exploring and learning about mountain glaciers and the alpine landscape through scientific field studies with professional glaciologists, mountaineers, and some years, artists as well. This recent article by founder Erin Pettit describes the philosophy.
NEWS Jan 2010: Girls on Ice 2010 program applications are up! Please visit the Apply page for more information and to download applications.
Girls on Ice 2010 course dates: July 26- August 5
Give a gift of exploration, learning, and adventure
» Find out more about Girls on Ice.
Girls on Ice 2009 Expedition - we did it!
Highlights: This year the snow level was very high, the glacier ice was more exposed than we have ever seen it before. Lots of water was running on the surface, leaving sinuous channels and many moulins. We discovered a small collection of beads and rings melting out of the glacier ice - probably thrown into a crevasse higher on the mountain many years ago (maybe in the 1960s?). Melissa, a volcano glaciologist, visited us and taught the group about the crater glacier, the dragonhole, and about sulfuric volcanic rocks that can actually burn! We found a small cave to crawl underneath the glacier. Half of the team climbed to the crater rim and then continued on to the very windy summit.
Click here to see a selection of photos.
The girls wrote summaries of their explorations:
Girls on Ice Timelapse Movie (low res version)
The 2009 Team:
Marie Seal (Kasigluk, Alaska)
Abrianna Peto (Salt Lake City, Utah)
Kaia Waller (Morristown, Vermont)
Sune Gerber (Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa)
Angelica Ferreira (Lemon Grove, California)
Annie Bartholomew (Juneau, Alaska)
Cheyanne Olson (St. Helens, Oregon)
Heidy Henriquez (Central Falls, Rhode Island)
Bethany Monsees (College Station, Texas)
Thank you to our generous donors!
Girls on Ice is offered in partnership with the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
