Guiding & Climbing Instruction

Southern Arizona offers excellent year-round rock climbing. The weather, rock quality, and variety of climbing available here yield amazing opportunities for adventure. The climbing season is year-round, and the climbs range from single-pitch roadside sport routes to long, scary, backcountry traditional routes.

I have been working for Arizona Climbing Guides in Tucson since 2005. ACG is one of the few guiding services in Arizona that has guides certified for multipitch climbing. If you're looking for a climbing guide for Cochise Stronghold or Mount Lemmon, this is the place to go. For further information or to arrange a booking, go to http://www.climbarizona.com.

Who can benefit from a certified guide?

Anyone! Whether you're a beginner or have been climbing for 30 years, you can always learn something to make you a better climber.

Instruction for Beginning Climbers

For the beginning climber, learning the right techniques can save hours of frustration, help avoid dangerous situations, and reduce the chances of getting hurt. Over thousands of days of climbing, I've seen a clear difference between beginners who learned from a certified guide and beginners who learn from their friends.

Learning to make placements, lead, build anchors, belay, route find, rescue, and manage time, rope, and transitions are critical to climb safely and efficiently. Teaching these skills requires a completely sound knowledge base, a logical approach to teaching, and a massive amount of experience. Very few recreational climbers possess these qualifications. A certified guide, however, has undergone rigorous training and examination to demonstrate competence in both climbing and instruction.

Bottom line: while there's some investment in taking classes as a beginner, you'll be a better, safer climber for it.

Instruction for Advanced Climbers

Even for people who have been climbing for years, there is always something to learn. I have been climbing since 1997 and have watched thousands of people climb. A few of them have been excellent - great movement skills, a wide array of technical skills, and a good sense of when to apply them. The vast majority, however, have obvious weaknesses that are slowing them down, limiting what they can climb, them at increased risk, or just making their climbing less enjoyable.

I put together a quick self-test below. These questions are geared toward traditional multipitch climbing, but many of the skills are applicable in all types of climbing.

Honestly ask yourself these questions:

Can you build a multi-directional, equalized anchor?
Do you know what "extension" in an anchor is, and the reason it's a concern?
Do you know what the effective ranges of your cams are?
Do you know when it is appropriate to extend a draw on a piece of gear?
Do you know how much force is generated in a typical lead fall? How much force is generated in a toprope fall?
Do you know there's a much better option to tying in with a daisy chain?
Are you able to belay two people at the same time while keeping the station organized?
Do you know when it is appropriate to belay off the anchor vs from your harness?
Do you know when it is appropriate to belay with an autolocking device vs a plaquette device vs a plate device?
Can you escape a fully loaded belay without unloading it?
Do you know how to quickly and easily extend the master point of your anchor?
Do you know when to use hip/shoulder belays vs terrain feature belays?
While belaying a second to an anchor, could you set up a rappel and have yourself on rappel before your second arrived?
Do you know how to back up a rappels and lowers?
If your partner were injured on a multipitch climb, could you smoothly and efficiently get him down, even if he is unable to assist?
If you had to lower someone 350 feet with two joined ropes, could you do it smoothly and confidently? How about if your partner was unable to assist you by unweighting the rope?
If your partner was injured on lead beyond the halfway point of the rope, would you know how to get them him down?
Using a mechanical advantage, could you raise a second up a pitch if the circumstances demanded it?
Do you know the advantages and disadvantages of tandem, simultaneous, and counterbalanced rappels?
Can you manage your rope at belay stances? How about two ropes? At hanging belays? When swapping leads vs not swapping leads?
Have you practiced these skills in the last month? In the last 6 months?

This is just a short list of things you can learn from a professional guide.

You might be asking if you really need to learn all of this. My answer: the more you know, and the greater your experiences, the more fun you can safely have. In climbing, greater skill leads to greater adventures.

Guided climbing for beginning or advanced climbers

Of course, guides are not only good for instruction. Ever been to a great climbing area for only a day or two? Or have you been eyeing up a remote, challenging climb but need help getting to the top? In either case, a guide is just the right person to help.

For guiding or instruction in southern Arizona, the place to go is Arizona Climbing Guides. See www.climbarizona.com for further information.