Climbing Guide Prep-work?

Hey all. I've finally ponied up and scheduled a day of 1 on 1 time with a guide in a month. I'm decently new to leading trad. I've followed for a bit and have led a couple pitches myself.  I want a guide to confirm if what I'm doing is okay or not as well as point out areas of weakness. What kind of prep-work can I do to get the most out of my time and money?  I'd prefer to not spend time with the guide going over things I could have easily researched or gone over on my own time. I'm rereading the Falcon Guide Climbing Anchors book and plan to go a day early to practice placing pro. I'd appreciate anything! Thanks!

Just be up front with the guide days before and the day of your guided day. Give the guide a list of things (check list) you want to have accomplished and gone over. I would think any decent guide would be able to make that happen.

Go place gear, study the placements, evaluate alternatives for each place and make a list of questions. Build anchors and do the same. When you are with your guide, watch them closely and ask questions about belay stations and rope management and evaluate and discuss their placements. Don't stress about getting your money's worth, any good guide will know how to give you as much as you can take in. Have fun!

Send your guide a pre-course email. Let him or her know what you want to be evaluated on and and what you want to learn. Don't be surprised if he or she does a quick review for you anyway. Often times it's easiest for for both the guide and the client if both parties are starting from the same point.

what guide and where ?  if you already know the basics i would probably ask to learn other things like haul systems, ascending a rope etc. i feel i learned those techniques better with a guide than a book.

Highlander, Joe & James: Solid stuff, I'll be doing that all of that! Thank you! The quick review to be on the same page makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the heads up, James.

Ted, I'll be in socal.  I'll add that stuff to my list, my goal for this trip is to make sure I have a solid foundation. If time permits I can see that information paying off, for sure.

If you only have one day don't try and cram in rescue, it will simply mean you get sub-optimal instruction in both rescue and the climbing skills you identified. The most useful thing I find myself doing with my clients wanting to learn and hone basic traditional skills is to have them mock-lead, placing as much gear as they can, then we rap the route together and talk about every characteristic and alternative for each piece. It takes a while, but most people seem to get a lot from having their work evaluated and talk about their though process. A good guide will teach you how to think about gear, not just a set of rules that you will get from a book. So, even the review will be useful if your guide is worth their salt.

Echoing the above, anything you can do to communicate to your guide the specific goals you have in mind will be helpful for them in planning the day to meet those goals. A thorough and honest appraisal of your current experience is helpful, too. But, since experience and skill aren't the same thing, your guide will likely want to do some kind of review with you, as James mentioned. Often, during a start-of-day review, knowledge gaps are highlighted and you learn new stuff during the review anyway. 

For trad leading, the mock lead with evaluation of placements, as Joe mentions, is rad. If you're interested in getting lots of gear placement feedback, you'll want to focus on routes that are well within your limits. If you're interested in feedback so you can start pushing your limits on gear, you can get on harder lines, but typically that means fewer pitches in a day since the climbing is harder for you, so less total feedback. If what's you're after is mileage/reps placing gear, the max value will typically come from doing lots of easier routes in a day.

If you're a visual learner, it can also be helpful for the guide to demonstrate a lead. This will let you see the prep/racking process, pre-climb strategy, where gear is placed, which gear is placed in what spots, how it gets slung (or not), when to sew it up, when to run it out, etc. You can then follow the pitch to clean the gear and see the placements. Ask your guide to talk you through this entire process as they're prepping/climbing to get into their head a bit and get some insight. If you're at a crag where it's easy to set up top ropes from above, it may be worth requesting your guide do a demo lead anyway if that's something you want to see (the guide may choose to avoid leading if they can easily set up a top rope as it's simply less risky for them when working with a client they've never met).

Finally, it's worth asking your guide what they think you need to work on and letting them facilitate that for you. When I have clients who are more advanced and have made it beyond the basic "I need to learn to place gear" or something like that, we have a frank discussion of their current skills and their subsequent goals. Then I can select appropriate skills for them to develop next. (This could vary widely from technical skills like rescue, to rope management, placing gear under duress, pushing the grades on gear, better selection of when to sling pieces, specific climbing movement skills, planning for more complex/bigger routes, etc.)

Oh, and ask questions. About everything. Make a list, email it to your guide, bring it with you. (And take notes about the answers if that's your style.)

Joe Crawford wrote:

If you only have one day don't try and cram in rescue, it will simply mean you get sub-optimal instruction in both rescue and the climbing skills you identified. The most useful thing I find myself doing with my clients wanting to learn and hone basic traditional skills is to have them mock-lead, placing as much gear as they can, then we rap the route together and talk about every characteristic and alternative for each piece. It takes a while, but most people seem to get a lot from having their work evaluated and talk about their though process. A good guide will teach you how to think about gear, not just a set of rules that you will get from a book. So, even the review will be useful if your guide is worth their salt.

+1 this ^  Covering the self-rescue topics, while important, would at this stage in the OP's development only dilute the gear assessment work, and potentially even tip the client into "information overload" whereby they don't absorb what is being covered. It happens quite easily IME.  Beyond just evaluating the client's gear placemnets, I would suggest spending time on the various options for belaying the second from above. That's something I see a lot of new leaders needing; too many are locked into one-and-only-one way to do it, be that guide mode on the anchor, direct off their harness, or something else in-between.

Have you talked to them about leading? I have climbed with guides while on work trips a few times and have run into guides who have said I was the first person they let lead (sport multi pitch) but not sure if they would let someone trad lead.

ViperScale wrote:

Have you talked to them about leading? I have climbed with guides while on work trips a few times and have run into guides who have said I was the first person they let lead (sport multi pitch) but not sure if they would let someone trad lead.

I suspect most guide services would be reluctant to let a new-to-them client lead trad. Mock lead, OK. Lead with a few key pieces in place, yea maybe. Sport lead, sure, why not. But it doesn't sound like OP is talking about sport leading.

Joe Crawford wrote:

The most useful thing I find myself doing with my clients wanting to learn and hone basic traditional skills is to have them mock-lead, placing as much gear as they can, then we rap the route together and talk about every characteristic and alternative for each piece. 

This matches my experience too. Hugely better than placing gear while on ground. 

Something that is not often described in books/instructionals is where or how often to place gear. Squeeze the guide on some strategy on this. 

Ask about variations of how to tie multiple pieces together when building a trad anchor. Alternatives, pros, cons... Don't be satisfied if the guide only shows you "THE way of the cordelette". 

Time permitting, ask for some hints on how to be time efficient while on the rock. You can't find this in text books either, 

Bring a camera and a tiny (pocket size, maybe 2"x4") notebook (the old-fashioned paper version) and use them frequently during your day of guiding. Check in advance that you can take close-up (1 ft distance) pics of gear placements. Give the guide some tip so you can hassle him by email afterwords if you have questions on your notes or pics.

Make sure to not only ask "How" questions. For a deeper understanding, the "Why" questions are more important. 

Patrik wrote:

Make sure to not only ask "How" questions. For a deeper understanding, the "Why" questions are more important. 

Also questions like, "When would you do it this way rather than what you showed me earlier?"

Gunkiemike wrote:

Also questions like, "When would you do it this way rather than what you showed me earlier?"

So very true. Especially for those coming into trad having sport climbed for years. Sport climbing (or more accurately stated: "how to manage sport climbing protection and safety") can often be brought down into a fairly small set of "rules" that you always follow with very rare exceptions. A "rule based" sport climber can easily get confused/frustrated when entering into trad where there seemingly are more exceptions than "rules". I prefer to think of trad as more a small set of concepts combined with on-the-fly improvisations. 

Highlander wrote:

Just be up front with the guide days before and the day of your guided day. Give the guide a list of things (check list) you want to have accomplished and gone over. I would think any decent guide would be able to make that happen.

I'd say this is the best advice on the page. I don't know how many times I've seen guides out with clients (many are claiming they want to be guides) and they get thrown on the sharp end and take forever to climb and build simple anchors. You can just tell they've overstated their ability and waisting valuable time. 

Thanks a lot everyone! I've taken note of all the advice will be implementing them.  I seriously appreciate it and am even more stoked than before.