Geoff Schellens – 2016 Millet Scholarship Recipient

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The bulk of the Advanced Alpine Guide Course / AE is an upper level alpine guide course with a few days of examination to achieve Aspirant status.  The focus is to push aspiring alpine guides on long difficult objectives with a variety of terrain and route finding challenges.  On September 7th the course started and we hit the ground running.  After introductions and various administrative duties we split into two smaller teams, four students with two instructors, and headed into Boston Basin in the North Cascades.  Unfortunately we encountered some “mealy” weather on the hike in, light rain and breeze kept us chilled as we picked our way through a cloud to the upper bivy site below Forbidden Peak.  By the time we set up camp, it was raining hard, not uncommon for September in the NorthWet.  With the promise of improving weather over the next few days we crawled into our wet sleeping bags for the night.

p1060796Day two didn’t provide that anticipated weather improvement we were hoping for, but we were still able to get a lot done in the wet cloud.  We picked out way over to the Quien Sabe Glacier and practiced a variety of crevasse rescue techniques. I spend a lot of time teaching crevasse rescue throughout the summer but don’t often get to practice, or learn the techy “tricks” in crack rescue.  The weather started to improve by evening and we were able to dry out our sleeping bags back at camp.

p1060846As the clouds dissipated on day three we found a significant amount of new snow and rime ice above 8000’ on Forbidden, Boston, and Sahale Peaks.  We ended up using the two remaining days in Boston Basin to get ourselves in lots of different and challenging terrain from the loose sucker gully on Shark Fin Col to the untracked Boston Glacier, to exposed ridge traverses.  I learned a lot of very useful tips in efficiently managing clients in some of this terrain while offering a high margin of safety and guide security.  Since I spend a lot of time guiding in Boston Basin and even on some of these particular objectives, I found it incredibly helpful to get feedback from the instructors, Jeff Ward and Mike Soucy.

p1060811Next we rolled east to Mazama for our rock rescue and movement tests at fun rock.  With the good weather holding we spent the morning covering four objective tests; the rock rescue, knot pass, 5.10a movement in rock shoes, and 5.8 in mountain boots.  Because this didn’t take all day we had some time to tour plan, eat a good meal, and get caught up on sleep before we went to Cutthroat Peak the following day.

p1060848Washington Pass is home to some of the best quality alpine rock climbing in the Northwest.  The first pitch on the North Ridge of Cutthroat Peak is not of this stellar quality, but perhaps it is the price of admission for the rest of the route.  After the 5.7 chossy gully we quickly gained the ridge and the stone improved dramatically.  The North Ridge offered lots of good guiding opportunity as the terrain changed constantly forcing countless transitions; pitched climbing to short roping to short pitching and more. Our descent was the SW Buttress for more practice onsite down guiding in varied terrain.  I thought Cutthroat was a great day out, loads of fun, and good practice of guide transitions both up and down.

Now for the EXAM!!!  From Cutthroat we made our way back to Cascade River Road and into the Eldorado Peak area for our Aspirant Exam component.  Jeff and Mike did a great job of making this potentially stressful section feel relaxed.  Josh, and I were first tasked with guiding Mike on the Southwest Buttress of Dorado Needle.  The big take away I got from this route was route finding.  There is no obvious line so you constantly have to pick the path of least resistance, highest level of security, least chossy.  This turned into a long day as the descent of the Northwest ridge was not obvious and ate up a lot of time.  We made it to the glacier as the sunset and picked our way back to camp under a rising full moon and panoramic views of the Cascades.  The following day we worked the North Ridge of Eldorado Peak with an added tower climb along the way.  Because we also needed to hike out the same day the focus was on efficiency and “guide hustle”.

Overall, I would say this was the most beneficial AMGA course or exam I have ever taken.  The number of learning opportunities offered every day was priceless.  Working with Jeff and Mike was fantastic, both have a depth of alpine guiding knowledge and are relaxed and easy going in nature, which for me, makes a great learning environment.

Geoff Schellens

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