Yesterday, Owens told our class that he had been climbing in Ecuador and that the glaciers there are shrinking, in part, because of deforestation. If there are no trees to trap the tropical warm air, he said, it simply rises up the mountains and melts the ice.

The snow-crusted ice surface feels soft to the touch at first, but it's surprisingly difficult to grab with a glove. I scrape up a handful. The crystals are huge, and it looks like I'm holding a pile of diamonds. Bates explains that because the water molecules have melted and refrozen, they are larger than those found in snow that formed in clouds.

"On a windy day, it's really tough," he says, smiling. "Goes right in your face." Don't bother eating it, he adds. The black specks are volcanic soot.

Bates points to the west, and we see a dark triangular shape looming on top of the cloud layer - the shadow of Mount Hood, created by the rising sun. It's amazing how perfect the triangle is, as if somebody has drawn the lines with a ruler.

He ropes us together, about six feet apart. If someone slips and falls, the others will dig in with their axes, feet, and hands.

A few years ago, locals conducted a test up near the summit. They dressed a sack of potatoes in Gore-Tex clothing and tossed it down the slope. Within mere seconds, a laser gun clocked the sack's speed at 90 miles per hour. In other words, if you're not on a rope and you happen to slip, you have about about one and a half seconds to somehow pin yourself to the mountain - or you're toast.

Our crampons crunch across the surface. We drop down into a bowl, and suddenly, there is nothing except the jagged peaks above and white on all sides. It's a perfect Henry David Thoreau-John Muir moment - nature's exquisite solace at 8,000 feet. The only sounds are of rocks tumbling down a nearby moraine. Loosened by the morning warmth, the stones kick up puffs of dust as they bounce down the mountain.