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General Climbing Discussion

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guides new zealand 26-Jul-2010 At 11:25:15 AM sleake

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Im just gonna put in the "get out there and do it yourself" voice. Get some time and gear - and go and play in the snow.

As far as Im concerned, TMC's are the worst possible value for money. All that seems to get done is lots of talking, top roping on seracs, practising self arrest and endless crevasse rescue - basically the stuff you instantly forget/realize you dont need once you start proper climbing. You will be with a bunch of gumbies - and the guide to client ratio (4-1?) prevents you from climbing ANYTHING cool.

If you REALLY want a guide - get another mate - and get a guide and go on a week long trip out to aspiring/pioneer/whever and absolutly pick their brains about everything. This will put you on the steepest learning curve of your life, you will bag cool peaks and actually learn skills you will put to use when you are on your own.

I can understand why you want a guide - the idea of mountaineering is typically made out to be a sport only for the truly hardcore, and if amatures try it you WILL DEFINATLY DIE!!!!! Particually in Oz, there seems to be a culture of 'you have to be a rock god before you can go to a real hill'.

This is a joke. Mountaineering is not about waking up with a hangover at 10, have a bunch of coffees in the fanciest cafe wearing your puffy downy and randomly yelling terms like redpoint, onsight an 'sketchin out' to impress the cute barister chick. Finish your caffine hit - drive to the carpark, shoulder your 3kg bumbag and complain about the epic walk in. Finally get to the crag after a gruelling 10 minute plod, take off your shirt, leave on your beanie and put harness and a few draws on, only to fail on the warmup, complaining loudly that its "too spoogy' and leave. Moan and groan on the way out about how crap the rock is/broken holds/how hot,cold,tepid the weather is and the horrid nature of the walkin.

Mountaineering is taking all the things you just complained about and combining and multiplying them by a factor of 10 to create the most horrible sport know to man.

Your lockoff ability, heelhook prowess and dyno skills will all be of no use.

All you need is the ability to truly suffer and keep putting one heavy cramponed foot ahead of the other when every fiber of your body is telling you to go back to the sunny cafe, 'huge' walkins and spoogy rock you once complained so much about.