Starlight and Storm: The Inner Thoughts of a Mountain Guide

I felt I needed to add another episode on this really important piece of guiding.

A super important topic. Sometimes we can use technical systems to affect pacing. 

A simple truth.

This is a legitimate but often overused and sometimes misused anchor system.

As the world is rapidly moving forward sometimes we loose site of more basic fundamental skills. All the new tools and data are awesome but only when used in the right context.

I feel this concept is not always thought about in it's greatest scope.

This sounds like a contradiction but when you dig deeper you see the truth in it.

I originally wanted to do a two part series on this topic. This is the first part. There may be another to follow at some point. These are easy skills to describe but devilish to master(if one can ever truly master anything). Some of the more dangerous skills guides can do. If you make a mistake everyone dies.

Listen in. 

This is often a misunderstood concept.

If you look at concepts and systems with an eye to logic you find places/systems where we contradict ourselves. I think each system/day should have a certain level of balance and flow.

I call rope elongation the silent killer. Most people don't understand how rope stretch in their systems can often introduce risk. Careful understanding of fall lines can help you decide where to go or how to protect a pitch.

People often get these two terms confused.

I find this concept to be really important for me.

I find that many guides want to jump ahead to the next step before they have finished what they are doing. This often opens them up to risk because some step in the process hasn't been fully completed.

Concepts worth thinking about.

This is such a fundamental part of any disciple that use rope. It seems so basic yet people's ability to simply and efficiently handle rope is going away. We live or die by our rope management. After client interaction rope handling is what we mostly do as climbing guides.

Terrain is one of the most fundamental pieces of our jobs as guides. How do we position ourselves, move through, mitigate, and work with it?

I use the analogy of pixels in a digital picture as a framework for risk management and creating experiences for clients.

The Munter hitch is a wonderful tool that has many applications. It's something every climber should know.

Checklists are important tools that have been used in the medical profession and in aviation to help facilitate decisions and not to skip steps that may create an outcome that is catastrophic. Good checklists are simple guidelines but are very hard to create. It's very challenging to create a universal checklist that fits for every situation. Understanding things on a more conceptual level vs a li...

Reflecting on how luck plays a role in our outcomes vs pure skill/decision making is important. It allows us to start to understand what we really have control over and create some strategies on maximizing our influence over those areas while mitigating the areas we have less control over. 

Sometimes it's a good idea to look deeper into the terms we use to describe ourselves and see if we can figure out what these terms really mean.

Some reflection.

Techtalks focus more specifically on tools and techniques. This about some of the fundamental knots we use.