Optimizing 20 weeks off per year? Strategy?

How would you guys use 20 weeks per year if your rough goal was eventual IFMGA down the road? I'd obviously spend it climbing but if you had to block out the weeks in advance, what weeks/months would you choose? June-August for USA and EU alpine? Dec-Jan in SA? Fall for NA rock? Based out of the US but a reasonable amount of international travel is an option.

Are you a proficient skier already? Don't forget that you have to complete the ski guide track as well. As an integral part of that track you also have to get certified as a Level 3 Avalanche Forecaster, which has its own requirements as well. You gotta break up your time so that you get a pretty significant amount of contact time in all disciplines. My suggestion; Move to Ridgeway, C.O. You're on the doorstep of the San Juans, Ouray, Red Mountain Pass, Camp Bird Road, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and just a few hours from Moab. There's a reason why a high number of IFMGA guides call S.W. Colorado their home...

I'm committed to a sub-optimal home base in the mid-atlantic for the next few years but the upside is that I could potentially have 20 weeks of "vacation" to have fun, go on expeditions, work on skills, etc...

We all have to do what we have to do. Your liberal vacation time will definitely give you an edge over other folks who are interested in pursuing getting their Pin, but not over folks who are fully vested in going for it. Having picked a few IFMGA guides brains they all pretty much said the same thing; they had to make unimaginable sacrifices to get to where they were. Basically the lived out of their cars, worked shit jobs for gas/gear/course tuition money. Most, if not all of them failed at least one course or exam in their certification progression due to lack of preparation or error correction. You will have to work twice as hard as they do in your 20 weeks because these guys LIVE for the pursuit of their Pin, whilst you have competing priorities for 32 weeks a year...
Good luck!

Not to mention if your not working in the field you'll have no experience to back your course work with....

You can take a course but without working knowledge and experience your wasting your time and money.....

IF you work 300 days a year as a guide, and then take courses your on the way

Fineeeeeeeeeee Foam I'll quit my job and move to Colorado.

Jim, I wasn't planning to take the courses without working for a guide service, just wanted to try and optimize my free time for the next few years.

Mark have you checked out the AMGA's suggested course progression? Somewhere on their website they have a flowchart that outlines what they suggest is your ideal progression from beginning to end.

FoamFinger wrote:Mark have you checked out the AMGA's suggested course progression? Somewhere on their website they have a flowchart that outlines what they suggest is your ideal progression from beginning to end.

I did see the course progression, it looks long and expensive.

I guess the real question here was how to best plan 20 weeks a year in the mountains with the option of chasing seasons across hemispheres. I'm not familiar with all of the climbing seasons abroad but summer seems to be the best for most alpine areas other than Ecuador and Argentina.

Uh, hate to break it to you but if you want to get your IFMGA Pin you have to go through ALL of those courses, with the notable exception being the Climbing instructor program (Single-pitch instructor/climbing wall instructor)
If your really serious you're legitimately looking at 10 years of courses/professional development and about $40k invested to make it all happen.
For Cereal.

What is your motivation to get the IFMGA? Sounds like you already have an ideal situation for a climber - work that pays well enough to afford international expeditions and lots of time off.

doligo wrote:What is your motivation to get the IFMGA? Sounds like you already have an ideal situation for a climber - work that pays well enough to afford international expeditions and lots of time off.

The course progression as a roadmap to keep pushing and learning. I'd also like to transition out of my current career down the road, plus I have dual citizenship with an EU country and they require IFMGA, blah blah blah

I don't like the lifestyle that my current situation will lead to so I'd like to break out and try to combine guiding with teaching or development work in the long-term.

The feeling of wasting time on non-mountain days.

I'm just a rock guide working on all the other stuff but here's how I'd break it down. Keep in mind this has a lot of pretty wild assumptions about skill level and working the course schedule as well as your own. It also assumes you have the funds and partners (if you need partners I'm looking for ski and alpine partners till the snow melts in CO and thru the summer in WA and Canada). I don't know jack about EU climbing. The other thing that makes it difficult is that you have to do stuff between courses, you can't just bang them all out at once. So I included what course I'd do when and started myself working on it in March.

Year One
March-June: Take an Level 1 avy and WFR course in the beginning of March. Start in Red Rocks and climb as many big routes as possible and take your RIC in March. Stay there for April and climb a bunch of even bigger routes. Expand out to Yosemite and the Black. By the time you get to May you should have the prerequisites for the RGC. From May until you take your AGC climb a lot of big alpine routes. Climb ice and mixed if you can find it. Probably in Colorado or Wyoming. Take your AGC in June in whichever you end up. From there head up to Canada or Washington and spend your time climbing glaciated routes until you've got the prerequisites for the AAGC. Save two weeks for the AAGC in September
September: Take RGC and AAGC

Year Two
February-March: Take Level II avy course and ski as much as possible. Try to find ski descents that require ice climbing or glacier climbing to get to. Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana will be the best skiing but no real glacier climbs and lots of avy problems to prevent you from getting the prerequisites. Washington and Canada will be easier to get your ski stuff done without dying and there is more glacier stuff but harder to get on ice. Otherwise you'll have to spend a lot of time doing separate ice and glacier climbs. Take IIC in Canada in February, SGC and RGE in March.
June-July: Climb a bunch of glacier routes in Canada or Washington, or Europe.
September: Take AGE

Year Three
January-May: Try to do enough skiing to get into the ASGC. If you get in try to ski enough or hope your schedule works out so you can do the SGE a few weeks later. Probably won't happen. Recertify your WFR somewhere in there.

I hope you're rich because your employer will hate you, your life partner will likely hate you (unless they're a guide in which case you might hardly see each other or you may get sick of each other), your body will most likely be used up. Your partners who aren't guides won't want to climb with you because of your ulterior motive with every trip and the fact they're way less motivated to go out in shit conditions. You'll be on a terrorist watch list for all the travelling you do but your local gear shop owner will probably wet themselves with joy every time they see you until you get that first cert or job and don't have to shop there.

The main problem though will be that you won't actually have any guiding experience. If you do get guiding experience you'll be working a lot of the times when you need to also be working on prerequisites. Conditions, partners, time off, and so on won't line up the way you want it.

I started doing courses in 2011. Did my RIC and RGC that year, AGC 2012, RGE 2013, IIC 2014, I'll do my SGC, Avy III, and AAGC next year. I'm hoping to be done by early 2017. Gotta try and get it done before my wife gets what she wants (kids).

Good luck, don't wreck yourself. Get a life insurance policy before you start guiding.

It took me 6 years full time climbing, skiing and guiding to get fully certified. Its a great career if you can travel and don't have an SO. At 38 I got tired of living out of a suitcase ...

Good luck and have some fun along the way.

I saw in last month's Climbing mag that IFMGA takes 1825 days and $50,000. And my guess is that that doesn't include travel expenses to the sorts of places you need to climb/ski for many of those 1800 days.