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Climbing Job

Original Post
will jones · · N.B. · Joined Feb 2013 · Points: 50

Any suggestions as to what would be a good job that would go well with climbing? Meaning enough money not to have to eat out of a dumpster and plenty of time for big trips. Just finishing high school and I'm addicted lol

20 kN · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2009 · Points: 1,346
climbon101 wrote:Any suggestions as to what would be a good job that would go well with climbing? Meaning enough money not to have to eat out of a dumpster and plenty of time for big trips. Just finishing high school and I'm addicted lol
Something with shift work or seasonal work. RN seems to be a popular choice.
Dustin Anderson · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2009 · Points: 0

#1.Nurse
#2 IT consulting
#3 teacher

Teachers have summers off (can live in rifle, maple canyon, ten sleep, tahoe every summer!) with a steady paycheck, can be a rewarding career if you like to teach, i have heard you either love it or hate it though. Lousy pay until you get tenured. Not too sure of the amount of job availability, but don't think it is too drab.

Many IT jobs are remote, you can buy a sweet "vansion" and live in it, just have to find a reliable internet connection in town, loads of job prospects, good pay. Downsides are that very little human interaction, can be very redundant, may have to work your way into a consulting gig.

Probably better is nursing because you can do travel nursing and see the entire world, pay is good, good job market and taking time off in between contracts is not seen as a negative. Only problem is you have to be in a hospital for 12 hr shifts, probably work nights (3x/wk) and deal with bodily fluids. Also a high drop out rate after a few years, can be very mentally taxing.

Personal advice, don't get tied down til you are older, move a lot in your 20's (to places close to climbing destinations), push your comfort zone a shit ton, travel as much as possible, and stay psyched on at least 1 activity other than climbing so you don't get super burned out (which will happen from time to time).

Woodchuck ATC · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 3,280

Teaching should be good for climbing,timewise you'd think, but not always. Many schools now end in mid June and are back in session mid Aug. The 2 HOT humid months of summer, to go where to climb? Miss the best comfy seasons. Deal with massive vacation crowds and prime time season costs to travel. AND most teachers are required to take additional classes, workshops, grad degrees and district wide training each year, which is either your time given up each and every weeknight at night classes until 10PM of the school year OR a month or more of your so called summer vacation. And you gotta pay for it our of your meager salary.
Worst job in the world to 'take time off' mid season, mid school year if you want to make a getaway for some awesome project. Crap , it's the one job you can't even call in deathly sick in the AM, because they are helpless without specific alternate plans laid out clearly for the substitute to use. I had to plan my 'sickness' a day in advance, organize the sub plans, and end up spending another day after 'recovery' just to get things back in order. If they didn't like my reason for a personal day, I was docked a full % of my salary and benefits.
Loved the job when it was agreeable,creative and fun (before the NO Child Left Behind mess ruined science teaching).., but couldn't afford to travel on a long out of country road trip during my 'free' summers because the salary doesn't give you any extra cash past your cost of living. So think it through before you consider teaching a perfect climbers job.

Tom-onator · · trollfreesociety · Joined Feb 2010 · Points: 790

Obtain all the necessary EMT and AMGA certs and go to work for the big boys, or open your own guiding business.

Mark Pilate · · MN · Joined Jun 2013 · Points: 25

Some Good advice in above posts

Another option if you're not into the college route, is road construction - work a crapload of overtime, save your coin, then head to warmer climbing climate in the off-season. Or similarly, try to get on a "Deadliest Catch" type boat.

My 2 cents (exact opposite from Tom-o-saurus: DON'T try and seek out an actual climbing job if you don't want to slowly suck the joy out of your climbing. Works for some, but for me, when climbing was a job, I hated it. Get the certs, but mainly for yourself. Maybe do it awhile, and maybe you'll see what I mean, or maybe you'll love it.

Ryan Kennedy · · Odessa, Tx · Joined Jun 2013 · Points: 10

I work as a flight medic working a 7 on 7 off schedule. Loads of time to climb.

Clifton Santiago · · Denver, CO · Joined Apr 2010 · Points: 0

Learn the arboreal arts, at height. Climb (trees) everyday, get paid yo, and if you're good you'll never be hurting for work , and you can do it anywhere.

Or go to Law School

Peter Franzen · · Phoenix, AZ · Joined Jan 2001 · Points: 3,730

Alternatively: get a degree, become a consultant for IBM or an Oracle partner, work on installing enterprise-scale database and billing systems, and take your standard 3-4 weeks of vacation plus the multiple weeks between projects to go climb all over the place and get wealthy while you're doing it.

And after a few years of that you can charge out the nose for your expertise as an independent consultant and work remotely from your house up in the mountains.

To quote the great movie SLC Punk: "I didn't sell out son, I bought in."

Matt N · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 415

Investment banker. After 5 successful years you can dirtbag for the rest of your life fulltime.

Clifton Santiago · · Denver, CO · Joined Apr 2010 · Points: 0

Alternately:
I would study my ass off for a PhD in Aerospace, I think it only takes like 10 years, then start at the ground level of a civilian space program, raise money non-stop for like 15 years, and occasionally work on designs and plans and shit like that when I can't sleep because the phone ringing from my student loan collectors, spend another 2 years hashing out a divorce, then spend 2 years in suspended animation on board IMFUKED1 before it lands on Mars. Climb Olympus Mons.

fossana · · leeds, ut · Joined Apr 2006 · Points: 13,318

In the IT/computer science world, you don't have to be a consultant to work remotely. More companies are offering flexible work locations for regular employees to stay competitive. My entire company is distributed with very few people actually working out of our offices by choice.

Fat Dad · · Los Angeles, CA · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 60
Clifton Santiago wrote:Learn the arboreal arts, at height. Climb (trees) everyday, get paid yo, and if you're good you'll never be hurting for work , and you can do it anywhere. Or go to Law School
That's a joke, right? From personal experience, the practice of law and climbing are not very compatible. Plus, law school is so expensive these days, your degree with come with a mountain of debt.
Clifton Santiago · · Denver, CO · Joined Apr 2010 · Points: 0
Fat Dad wrote: That's a joke, right? From personal experience, the practice of law and climbing are not very compatible. Plus, law school is so expensive these days, your degree with come with a mountain of debt.
Well, it's a bit of a joke to arrange one's occupation around recreation, unless one is serious about neither. (which is not a bad thing)
20 kN · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2009 · Points: 1,346
Dustin Anderson wrote: Probably better is nursing because you can do travel nursing and see the entire world, pay is good, good job market
My experience with the RN field has been different. It seems the market for RNs seems to be pretty poor right now. My girlfriend is an RN. She has near-perfect evaluations and comes highly recommended from her manager. She has a degree from a respectable university, and she has just under 10 years experience (NICU III, RN III) working in top hospital. Yet when she tried to get an RN job in CA last year, she couldn't. Oh, and she was applying to work for the same company she already works for, so she had preference over most other applicants. She got an interview for almost every position she applied for, but she never made the cut.

On the bright side, once you make your way into RN, if you specialize you can make a ton of money, and get loads of time off. My GF makes six figures, gets over 15 days off per month, and she got a second degree for free (her employer paid for it). If you go the CRNA route, you can really make bank. But again, without experience it can be hard to get into the field.

Clifton Santiago wrote: Or go to Law School
hahah I hope you are kidding. I know so many attorneys that dont even have enough time to get gas let alone climb. Plus, the law field seems to be a bit locked up as well (along with pretty much every other field outside of programing).
Clifton Santiago · · Denver, CO · Joined Apr 2010 · Points: 0
20 kN wrote: hahah I hope you are kidding.
Serious is my business, and business is good.
Ryan Nevius · · Perchtoldsdorf, AT · Joined Dec 2010 · Points: 1,832

Freelance web / app development.

AField · · Unknown Hometown · Joined May 2011 · Points: 55

This may not appeal to your idealism, but I was told by a professor in graduate school, a former climber, that if I wanted to pursue climbing seriously, I should move somewhere with rocks and work at Starbucks. If, however, I chose to pursue graduate school, I'd have to be ok with only making it to rocks every few weeks/months.
Pursuing climbing as a serious thing is a worthy goal, and is a good way to get your head straight and figure out where you're going, but if you want a "career" in the conventional sense, you'll have to sacrifice some of the freedom you're used to with a climbing lifestyle.
I will say, as a someone who has entirely too much education, that you should choose a career path which allows you to be healthy in body, mind and spirit. College, or at least the way I did it, was difficult, and graduate school was even more soul-crushing. If I could do it again I'd be less intense about the whole thing and make more of an effort to be healthy.

Just Jesse · · Methuen, MA · Joined Jul 2012 · Points: 5

If you can find a good agency (that will let you work off-site), or a couple of good freelance clients, you can make a fairly decent hustle in marketing/advertising/web development. The entire industry is last-minute and totally wacked, but you can work anywhere you can get a wireless signal. It can work if you have talent, patience and a bit of ingenuity.

Chris D · · the couch · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 2,230

I met a guy at Smith Rock last week whose job was rockfall prevention. From how he described it, the job involves finding and trundling loose material above critical infrastructure. Sounded kind of dangerous to me, and he said it kind of was, but there he was climbing on a beautiful Tuesday, and he said it pays well.

I think that windmill cleaning has been discussed in the forums as an option for climbers, since you probably already have some experience that will help you get the rigging figured out quickly. The rock trundler at Smith told me that those jobs pay well but are hard to come by.

Don't rule out a regular 9-5. Put in a couple of years somewhere with flexible time off/vacation policies and you may find you have plenty of time to climb.

+1 for IT jobs that let you work remotely. I work for a software company, and even though corporate prefers that you work in one of their office locations, I have plenty of co-workers who work from their homes in locations all over the world. If you're going to go that route, it helps to be really good at something that's hard to do and can be done from anywhere. Being a really good Java developer, for example, is going to facilitate your plan better than being a really good project manager.

Make yourself valuable enough to your employer that you can dictate where you live. That might involve paying some dues in the office before you can break out to your "remote" office.

Buff Johnson · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Dec 2005 · Points: 1,145

powerball winner -- hands down, biggest bang for the buck w/ least effort. The world is your oyster. You can even open up a consulting shop in Boulder.

Or, porn star. no divorce necessary

& if they tell you hookers and blow are bad, they are lying to you!

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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