Joshua Cole on Receiving the Walker Family Foundation Scholarship
The AMGA is working to increase the professionalism, safety, and standard of guiding in our country. While the AMGA is succeeding in these aims, the culture of American guiding remains distinctly different from that in Europe and Canada. Many American guides still struggle to make guiding a sustainable profession. By donating toward AMGA scholarships, the […]
An Icelander’s Path to AMGA Certification
Icelander Einar Ísfeld Steinarsson first started considering IFMGA certification in 2002. But at that time Iceland was not a member country of the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association. However, as part of a mountain and para-rescue team, where he trained with the U.S. Marines in winter survival in the Icelandic interior, Greenland, and the United […]
Error Correction: A crucial skill on the path of AMGA certification
By Henry Beyer, Program Director Each year the ranks of AMGA Certified Guides grows. Students have earned an average of 50 Guide Track certifications per year over the past four years. And this year we expect that trend to continue. In fact, a few members have already earned certifications in the Alpine, Rock, and Ski […]
On the Web: Profiles & Q&A’s with AMGA trained/certified guides
We recently combed the Internet to find profiles on AMGA-trained and AMGA-certified guides. We found these links and photos. If you know of other AMGA-trained/certified guides who have had stories written about them, please share them with us by emailing links, stories, photos, and/or videos [email protected]. Adrian Ballinger has been living his dream as a […]
Durability is the Key to Success (in mountain guiding & in life)
By Kyle Lefkoff “Contestants must be present to collect their prize money” – Peter A. Roshko, Venture Capitalist Peter and I took a ski tour in Zermatt in 2011 with our Swiss partners, Dominik Meyer and Uli Geilinger. Zermatt is the birthplace of mountain guiding, and we were privileged to have as our guide Hermann […]
Unroped: Finding Meaning in the Meaningless with Andrew Yasso
The fall/winter 2013 GUIDE Bulletin features an Unroped profile of Petzl Scholarship recipient Andrew Yasso. Here, on The Guiding Life blog, we present an extended Q & A with Yasso with material we didn’t have room for in the print article. AMGA: What steps did you take to become a guide? Andrew Yasso: At Central […]
I put a pole in my puffy: how to navigate the Wapta Icefields
By Jesse Williams, UIAGM / AMGA guiding working with Cloudsplitter Mountain Guides LLC One time, at ski camp, I put a pole in my puffy. Doug, Pete, and I were headed late out of the gate on a week-long traverse of the Wapta Icefields in the Canadian Rockies. It had been a long night of […]
