question for climbers

[Roos2er]

Just a quick question for all the climbers on the forum. In your opinion which would be a better climbing course to take. A basic course through the Mountaineers or a 1 to 2 week course through one of the guide services in washington. I would imagine that many of you got your start using one of these methods and I would appreciate everyones opinon to help me make a decision on which direction to go. Besides the $$ difference between the two which one would you recomend.

Thanks in advance to all that reply

[The_Rooster]

Guide service.

 

But more importantly:

 

STAY AWAY FROM MY HENS!!!!!!!!!!!

 

COCK A DOODLE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ken4ord]

Read up on the basics and go climbing with experienced climber(s), to see if you like it and want to invest time and money into it. If you want to get right into it and have a good base foundation then hire a guide and be specific what you want out of it, following (basic belay skills, half day), setting basic anchors for top roping (1-2 day course), sport climbing intro (1-2 day course), or trad lead skills (2-3 day course). I think your time will better spent breaking it up the trainings so you have time to practice and become competent. If you want the fear of god and the mountains or want to date then take a Mountaineers course.

 

BTW, I actually believe most people here learned from experience with friends and reading, not the mountaineers and/or a guide service.

 

[Roos2er]

I have done plenty of reading however learning from friends will not be option as they are interetsed in nothing more than backpacking. I did climb Mt Rainier with AA last month and I am hooked. I really want to learn the basics of Alpine climbing and atempt peaks like Eldorado etc. Currently I am just looking for an avenue to learn the basic skills necessary to be an asset to a climb and not a liability. How much expereince would a newby like myslef need so that climbers(like the ones here) would feel comfortable adding you to there team? And where isthe best place to aquire these skils?

[denalidave]

Guide service.

 

But more importantly:

 

STAY AWAY FROM MY HENS!!!!!!!!!!!

 

COCK A DOODLE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thread drift, we gonna see a cock fight? Is cc.com big enough for two chickens? Rooster vs Roos2er, wow what a line-up. Or maybe they will gang up on some unsuspecting trolls?

[Roos2er]

Sorry to disapoint but there will be no cock fight It has been my experience that thee are plenty of hens in the hen house!

Edited August 20, 2008 by Roos2er

[pc313]

Learn as much as you can from were ever you can ie: Book's,

TV,CC.com,And don't bite off more then you can chew!

Nohting wrong Guides If you got the money,I learned from

Friends who climbed,and fixing my mistakes. Good luck!!

[Rad]

You could post in the partners forum and roll the dice.

If you're willing to pay for gas $ and act as belay slave people will bite.

[ken4ord]

Well it sounds like you have no friends who are interested, but you will have to make them unless you want to hire a guide everytime you want to get out and climb something.

[Jeff W]

Here is the way I see it --- if you decided to take up some other activity, golf for example, you would likely take lessons from a competent instructor to start out. You could read golf books, or have friends give you pointers on the course, but probably would develop quicker with instruction. Using the golf analogy again, you are better off learning the basics and practicing to improve. I suggest taking a course with one of the guide services. After you have the basics down, reading books and getting out on climbing excursions will be more useful.

[mkporwit]

I think there's several things to consider in deciding between the mountaineers/boealps/wac and a guide service. The mounties get a bad rap on this website for some reason, so I'd discount anything too vitriolic or ridiculing their course to an extreme.

 

1) If you're raring to go and short on time, a guide service will get you up and running quickly. The basic climbing courses offered by the mountaineers or other orgs are over for the year and you'd have to wait until next spring to start. You wouldn't "graduate" until the end of next summer, most likely.

 

2) The mountaineers and their ilk will teach you this stuff for probably a fifth to a tenth of the cost of a guide service. The basic class costs $300. If money's tight and time is not of the essence, it might be worth considering. Their subsequent modules are priced very favorably as well.

 

3) The mountaineers get criticized for teaching "the one true way". There is rarely such a thing in climbing, but it is a necessity of the way the course is structured. If you know things coming into the course, you may be frustrated to be told your skills are no good and to shelve them while you're taking the class. My experience has been that a lot of instructors will understand where you're coming from and it really isn't that onerous.

 

Conversely, if you don't know jack, don't assume that what you've been taught is "the one true way". Some people finish the basic class and read FotH and think they know everything...

 

4) You're likely to meet a lot more people taking the courses through boealps or the mounties. I've met great partners this way. If you're short on friends that climb...

 

5) The mountaineers have a rigid course progression... so you can't go and take the trad climbing course without first learning the basics of glacier travel. Their aim is to make you well-rounded, but if all you want to do is crag at Leavenworth, then you'll be wondering why you have to do this.

 

6) The mountaineers are a very variable experience. My own has been with the Everett branch, which has a very high instructor to student ratio, so you get lots of individual attention. As a result of that there's less of "the one true way" than I've heard about from other branches. If you sign up with the mounties, do your research and pick a branch that suits your style, not just your commute.

 

7) Never discount the advice that Rad gave you -- if you offer to be a belay slave, there are very good people on this site that will help you out.

[catbirdseat]

Yeah, there is always Uncle Matt. That great friend to newbies. There should be more guys like him!

[Buckaroo]

Read Books, F.O.T.H. and "Alpine Climbing: Techniques To Take You Higher" are 2 good ones.

 

Get some rock shoes and go to the UW rock (Husky stadium), it's free. Or whatever is closer, Spire in Spanaway or the training rock at Marymoore park. You can sometimes get people to teach, and find partners at these places. There are climbing gyms also but cost $ and better for when it's raining.

 

Hike Tiger mountain, the trails are convoluted it will hone route-finding skills. Little Si and Big Si likewise, with a pack for strength/aerobics.

 

You can do crevasse rescue training from a tree in the back yard if you're careful.

 

The Mounties are very structured which some may find inhibiting, and as already mentioned more long term.

 

Guides are expensive and more recommended for those with unlimited money but limited time (ie CEO's). It depends where you want to end up. Most with natural talent (learn more on your own) can end up with good partners doing it on their own.

 

And of course CascadeClimbers.com. Read some TR's, lots of good pics and info. And if you ever have questions all the answers are here.

 

Eldorado TR

 

Eldorado TR

 

Eldorado TR

[Bug]

Guides are a great way to get started if you have the money.

I used the Lowe Alpine School "Intermediate Rock Climbing" course when I was 17. It was in Eldorado Canyon. It was well worth it.

From there, I had a good solid base of what the range of styles and safety margins for different people were. I was ablr to strike out and travel and climb with strangers in the Valley, JT etc. I also had friends in Missoula that I climbed with. They were kind of sporty though. Safety seemed like a problem at times and I was getting nervous. But that was mostly due to the fact that we were all in highschool. Once in College, I met several other good climbers and refined my skills with them.

In short, the guide school was a really good jumping off point.

But it will also depend on the instructor you get there.

 

Good luck!

[billcoe]

From my experience, the safest and best (NOT THE FASTEST) way to do it is take the full Mountaineers course. reading books is an adjunt to that, not a replacement for it. If you can do the guide thing AND hook up with a reliable mentor afterwards, that would be first choice, but getting an experienced dude to let you dog him will be rare and unusual.

[Peakpimp]

I'm pretty much in the same place as you Roos2er. I'm looking to eventually do hard alpine trad but don't really have any friends that are interested in more than backpacking. Unfortunately I can't take the mountaineers course because I'm a full time student and unable to make the time commitment, and I can't afford a guide service for above mentioned reasons. I've read all the books, scrambled a lot of local peaks, met and climbed with more experienced partners and even scraped up enough cash to attend Mountain Gear's U Climb event being hosted at the Exit 38 crags near North Bend at the end of the month. Hopefully that will give me a solid enough foundation to feel confident when answering or posting messages seeking climbing partners. Although I am left to wonder the same thing as you;

 

" How much experience would a newbie like myself need so that climbers(like the ones here) would feel comfortable adding you to there team?"

 

It's the old you need experience to climb but need to climb to get experience cycle.

[selkirk]

Some of the info on the Mounties is recently outdated.

The Seattle Branch (which takes most of the head), has recently shifted from large single course (200+ students) to smaller groups, and are breaking apart alpine skills, rock, and glaciers a little more so that you don't necessarily have to go through all of them, or all of them at once. There are also some much more brief courses, like intro to rock climbing sort of things, with the goal of getting you ready to lead 5.7ish sport safely.

 

The Mounties are a bit rigid, but the basic courses mostly start

with the assumption that the students have never done anything technical. It's also rather common to start there with a climbing course, develop a few basic skills, and more importantly develope a network of climbing partners to get out with.

[tvashtarkatena]

3 big advantages of taking a course or courses:

 

1) They teach you some of the more involved skills you won't be able to learn from your partners on the fly, such as crevasse rescue, avalanche safety, and mountain oriented first aid. The Mounties actually do a decent job of this.

 

2) You'll learn more faster.

 

3) You'll meet climbing partners.

 

 

Edited August 20, 2008 by tvashtarkatena

[northvanclimber]

i was in a similar spot about 5-6 years ago. wanted to start mountaineering but my friends were all sport climbers. took a week-long alpine course, learned a lot (which included repeatedly practicing the skills we were being taught), and met a bunch of guys that, to this day, i still climb with.

[Moses!]

 

 

The Mountaineers courses breed an out-dated style of climber that is more akin to a mountain tourist than a climber. I think you'll find that, chances are, most of the worst of the worst serial sprayers here were involved with the Mounties at some point. The community impression of Mounties grads and instructors is, by and large, pretty poor. Even after getting Mountiecized by one of their Glorified Mountain Enthusiast courses most of these chumstiks don't know enough to climb out of a wet paper bag, let alone climb a peak.

 

If slow, outmoded, heavy and antiquated methods are your goal....then the Mounties is your best bet.

 

Do yourself a favor, take a course with a certified guide somewhere ...the Alps, Canada, the US...anywhere. The best way to learn how to climb is with people who actually practice their craft at a high level.

 

A lot of people will tell you that you should "learn from a buddy", well thats part of it. But get the basics from a course taught by climbers for climbers. Once you've got the basics then go climbing with your friends. People who shit on guides are usually too poor to afford one and stumbled their way up a few peaks without getting killed. The other group, committed climbers, climb enough to know how to meet up with people. If you haven't figured out that its more important to enjoy life than to work and consume, chances are your not in this group, sorry.

 

The Mountaineers is a publishing company, and a pretty good one. If you need a book printed, I bet they can help. For climbing instruction take a course from a Guiding company that employs experienced guides that climb at a high level.

 

 

OK, spray on you chumstik Mountie shorts-over-polypro tourons!

 

ps...if this post insults you, you're likely a douche-bag and should die.

 

[davidjo]

There's more on this thread: climbing course discussion.

 

Once you start getting up to speed, climb with various partners, and watch how they do things in different situations. Figure out what works best for you. Books can also give you good ideas for things to try. Freedom of the Hills often shows outdated methods, so go with the Mountaineers "Expert Series", Falcon's "How to Climb" series, or Connelly's sometimes contrarian Mountaineering Handbook.

[pc313]

"WEll ROOS2ER" if 10+ pages of free advice hasn't set you

on a bearing,not to mention the fact you climb Rainier,read

the TR's and ya'll see that even the best climbers make

mistakes and write about it so the rest of us may learn what not to do!!!

BE KOOL BE SAFE!

 

Edited August 20, 2008 by pc313

[Buckaroo]

Blanket generalizations there Moses. Probably true for some of the mounties but not all. I've seen some messed up guiding to so that's not a 100% route either.

 

The worse thing the mounties do I'll admit is encourage people with no natural talent on the assumption you can mold anyone into a climber. I think you are a born climber or not. If you don't have the necessary talent then all the training is useless and even dangerous.

 

The main problem I've seen with guides is hogging the best pitches. I'm not sure if they were certified but one of them had his client jugging almost the entire Liberty Crack carrying both their gear in a heavy backpack.(too much gear). When the client passed us he was cussing up a storm.

 

The other was on City Park. It was an aid class and the guide aided the first gravy aid pitch and sent the client on the second pitch toward Slow Children. This is not a good aid pitch because the upper section has some mandatory free. The client went off route looking for aid and got into some loose rock. You can't see the leader from the belay here so no one knew he was off route. When the guide jumared that 2nd pitch he knocked off a couple of pretty large rocks because the rope was running through them. The rocks smashed on the ledge at the top of the first pitch and luckily went a little wide of the base into the trees. A couple of climbers were at the base, that guide sure looked foolish on that day.

[moronbros]

outdated techniques? You have to be kidding me! A dulfersitz is faster than a rap in low angle terrain. A hip belay is quick on the terrain ascending. It's called improvisation and no one technique is better than the other.

[AlpineK]

I'm a Mounties Basic grad from '78 or 9 and an Intermediate drop out from '82 or 3

 

At the time the goal of the class was to provide a general course on mountaineering. They did some rock climbing, but it wasn't a good environment to work on your rock climbing skills or ice climbing for that matter. If you really wanted to learn that stuff you needed to go out on your own.

 

Today I'm not sure what the best route to climbing/mountaineering is.

 

It seems to me if your interest is cragging or mountaineering you should take some kind of general outdoor skills class to choose appropriate gear, evaluate conditions for risk, weather, etc. Past that reading textbooks helps some, but going out and actually climbing helps a lot more.

 

As you progress an occasional class may help to improve your skills, but climbing a lot helps the most. You do have to pay attention to your actual skills as you progress.

 

Take your time and try to avoid getting in over your head on every trip. Don't be afraid to be honest with yourself and walk away from your goal if you realize you need more practice.