Category Archives: Guiding

Red Rocks

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Well, I’ve just returned from a 2 week trip to Red Rocks. If you haven’t been there to climb it is definitely worth checking out. The rock is very high quality sandstone with a lot of features – cracks, flakes, edges, and tons of chickenheads. It’s a climber’s dream and a rappeller’s nightmare.

I spent the first week staying with some friends from Boston in a house (a rental). This worked out very well with people pretty much being able to choose who they were going to climb with for the day. The choices varied from sport climbing to long multi-pitch routes.

My second week was spent guiding for Alpine Endeavors. We won the lottery this year! Well actually we were one of the guide services chosen to receive a permit to guide at Red Rocks for 10 days throughout the calendar year. We ran one 5-day trip in the spring and one 5-day trip this November.

Here are some of my better pictures from the trip:

rob-wildturkeys001 joe_heliotrope001 amy-danglingparticiples001 brooke-blackorpheus amy_sundog001 rainbow-morning001 amy-schaeffers001

Having returned just returned from Red Rocks, my next few posts are going to be related to rappelling. I’ve been thinking that I will cover different options for rappelling, and the different rope systems you can use.

Fall Foliage: Last Licks?

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Vic Benes at the top of p.2 of Easy Overhang

Vic Benes at the top of p.2 of Easy Overhang

It snowed last week, was really sunny and warm this week, and it’s torrentially raining out there today. Welcome to late October in the Hudson Valley. A friend called last week to let me know he’d climbed Pinnacle Gully already and that I should come up to ice climb. Now why would I do a thing like that? There’s dry, warm rock in the Gunks for at least another month.

I was out yesterday with a client. The forecast was calling for a chance of rain and cold and windy conditions. Great for climbing. I had the chance to do a few routes with Vic Benes, of Millburn, NJ who’s been climbing in the Gunks since the mid-60′s. More than a full decade longer than I’ve been alive. It was a pleasure and we were able to do some classic routes that I haven’t done in a while. I can only hope that I’m as mobile as he is when I’m his age.

I have posted a picture, and you can see the foliage is definitely past peak, but it’s still very beautfiul outside. The yellow-orange color of the hillsides is unique to a few days of the year during the fall. Our climbing season here doesn’t really end for another month or more, but it looks like today’s rain and wind may actually bring many of the leaves down.

AMGA SPI Course 10/09/2009

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I just finished teaching my fourth AMGA SPI Course on my own just a few days ago. The American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) Single Pitch Instructor (SPI) Course (aargh, all those silly acronyms!) is a 3 day course geared towards new instructors who want the requisite skills to work in a single pitch climbing environment. It is great for people who guide occasionally, work only in a single pitch environment, or work for a camp/outdoor program where climbing isn’t the only focus. It also happens to be a great course for people who are looking to solidify their anchor building, belaying and basic rescue skills. For this reason I suggest it to anyone who feels like they may someday teach friends/loved ones how to climb.

My most recent course included a diverse group of individuals with varied levels of experience. I took lots of pictures during the course and have a selected a few of them for this post. They clearly show many of the concepts introduced throughout the course.

Below is a video demonstrating a good load transfer to remove an object that is jammed in a rappel device:

Sauna Summer in the Pacific Northwest

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For the past three summers Alpine Endeavors, the guide service I work for in the lower Hudson Valley, has run a trip to the Northwest in late July and early August. It’s really nice to guide different terrain and to escape the brutal southern New York summer heat and humidity. I absolutely detest the humid summers we have here in the northeast. In fact I often wonder why I don’t move further north or out west, but the amazing fall and winter seasons more than make up for the month and a half of relentlessly humid weather we experience here every summer.

I look forward to this trip all summer; it’s my brief reprieve from the hot weather. However, when we arrived this summer the Pacific Northwest was in the throes of one of longest droughts and heat waves on record. The temperature one day in Portland was 106 degrees F. The glaciers were literally melting out from beneath our feet. However, the remarkably stable high pressure system created unusually warm dry weather which is perfect for alpine climbing.

Jesse Williams, of Cloudsplitter Guides, and I were able to take advantage of the warm clear weather with our clients, Bill, Richard and Alex.  During our stay in Eldorado Basin we climbed the East Ridge of Eldorado Peak, The Northwest Ridge on Dorado Needle, and played around in crevasses for a day on the Inspiration Glacier.  Richard and Alex left for New Hampshire and a family reunion, while Bill stuck around for our trip to Mt. Shuksan. We met up with Keith, Elee, David and headed for the Sulphide Glacier. Three days later we summited Mt. Rainier via the Emmons Glacier in windy, yet fine, weather. I have posted some of the higher quality pictures from the trip below.

Necktie or Noose?

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Last March I decided to try something totally new and foreign to me. I took a teaching position at small private school in central Massachusetts. Guiding is teaching, and so I thought that I should give other types of teaching a try.  Being a climbing guide is challenging in many ways.  Work and paychecks are not consistent and frequently depend on good weather (it can be a relationship buzzkill too). I thought being in a classroom would be a good way to continue teaching yet receive steady paychecks.  Not to mention I had considerable debt from taking 3 AMGA courses over the past 3 years.

The position actually began last September and will run through June 12 of this year. I have officially begun the countdown until the end of the schoolyear.

This year has been one giant frustrating growth experience for me. With every experience I seem to learn more about what I don’t like and don’t want than what I really like and want in my life. The past nine months have been no exception for me.  I miss being outside every single day that I work here in the classroom.

There is a dress code at the small junior boarding school where I work. I have to wear a tie every day.  For me it has come to symbolize the loss of connection that I feel with the natural world when I am working full-time (a big understatement considering there are required weekday and weekend duties) indoors. I feel smothered; cut off from the world around me, and at times it drives me crazy.

It’s no wonder humans have razed most of the forests on Earth, drilled holes in the ground and cut the tops off mountains in order to acquire resources.  For most people that connection to the natural world is lost, or was never forged in the first place.

What have I learned this year? That I am a person that needs to be outside most days.  Indoor jobs just don’t cut it for me. I’d rather break my back moving stone or dirt than be stuck inside.  And all teaching jobs are not the same. Working mostly with adults who are paying their hard earned money to have a safe, fun experience outdoors is radically different than working with students who have learning or social issues and don’t necessarily want to be where they are.  It’s easy to forget that adolescence is a tough time in life.  Most kids, even the “normal’ ones, are full of angst and unable to effectively communicate their issues with the community around them.

I have learned that the guiding life is for me.  You get to climb for work and climb for fun, meet new and intelligent people everyday, and be outdoors all the time. This time around I am going to make the guiding life work no matter what it takes.