Big Wall Intro

Hello, does anyone know of any recommended big wall courses (especially in CO or CA ... Colorado in general ... California - in general, Yosemite area, lake Tahoe) and/or guides? I'm knew and would like to get schooled up on aid and other essential techniques. Thank you.

Colorado Mountain School is Estes Park can probably assist. First off--buy the couple of bigwall quidebooks available and learn the systems thoroughly. The cool thing about learning aid is you can self belay easily to practice LOTS on easy stuff after your initial training. Check out 'aid climbing rant' on youtube, as well. Top notch

Good luck in your aid climbing adventures. Before you add in the mess of hauling and bivying on a big wall you'll definitely want to do a bunch of aid routes to get those systems down. It's a constant mess because you have all this extra gear and crap hanging off of you that constantly gets caught on everything else. Trad climbing will seem simple by comparison.

I can't tell where you're located, but a really fun first multi-pitch aid route is Kingfisher - Colorado Northeast Ridge. It's also a great intro to the interesting, but addicting climbing in the Fisher Towers. :) It's mostly a bolt-ladder, with a handful of gear placements.

Once you've done a few smaller multi-pitch aid routes go for for some of the small big walls in Zion or other places where you can start hauling and sleeping on a portaledge. Oh, and practice your jugging. It was a major problem for me when I started for some reason. If you can get that down to where it's super easy and fluid your life will be soooo much easier.

Lots of good fun to be had, then you can take your aim at the big stone.