Skiing question....

Sounds like you'd be using cross-country skis. You'd need special shoes for those, and while I"m not sure about modern skis, the old fashioned ones would have been okay for child and adult, though you'd have to pick the right size and they'd be a little long for the kid, and a little short for the adult.

Cross country skiis. Length would be an issue if there's a substantial difference in height of the child and adult (i.e. 6'6" adult and 5' child). It's easier for someone to use skiis that are too short than the other way around. Puma

Cross country skis, yes. But not with ordinary bindings and shoes. Near the pole, you'd need serious boots on your feet, like sorels.

They make special cross country (telemarking) binding for larger boots. I've used a kind that would take sorels, but there's numerous types of telemarking boots/shoes as well as bindings to accomodate.

It's been a while since I did cross-country skiing, but I remember having to wax them a lot. I really would have prefered shorter skis to cut down on the length of time I wasted when I could have been making my way back to the cabin. Remember that cross-country is very tiring as well, so a 12yo may have difficulty maintaining the pace and covering the distance.

You can get cross country or telemarking skis that don't need waxing. Also, I'm assuming it would be fairly flat, but if they need to climb at all they would probably want climbing skins for the skis. I was a ski patroller and ski instructor for years, but never did any serious cross country or telemark stuff, so I'm going more on what I've heard. Maybe do a google search on telemark skis climbing skins?

Most people ski glaciers on regular snow skis -- or use snowshoes -- I haven't heard of using cross-country for this type of terrain navigating, unless it's quite FLAT, ie, the North Pole or parts of Antartica. You didn't say which pole, north or south...

Since skis are much shorter now, there's not much diff between what a 12 y/o would use and what an adult would use -- they might be much the same. But that's not the issue -- the bindings (the things holding feet to ski) would be.

Bindings are sized per boot, per individual. The child have to wear the adult boots to fit the bindings sized for those skis. Unless she wears tons of socks to make them fit better, her feet would pop out of the boots!

If they're climbing a lot, they would not keep their skis on anyway, but lash/tie them on their backs.

You might check some Warren Miller ski movies (youtube?) - and watch some glacier skiing, if it applies.