Each subsequent day will begin with a delicious breakfast and a planning sesh. The exact curriculum will largely be determined by the abilities and interests of the group participants, as well as the weather and conditions.
On good-weather days, your guides will prioritize being outside and moving higher up on the mountain for various lessons and employ the learning-by-doing method. If it’s cloudy and drizzley, they will pick outdoor classrooms closer to camp and if it gets too wet, you will pile into your cook tent(s) for some tent learning. Most nights you will return to the same camp and enjoy a hearty dinner cooked up by your guides.
At some point on the trip, the goal is to attempt a climb of one of the local summits, allowing you the opportunity to solidify your new skills with practice. Sometimes this climb happens at the end of the trip and takes a day or two, other times it begins right away and learning happens on the go – the timing here is very much dictated by the weather forecasting and the conditions.
There is always a chance that the climb might not be possible due to weather or the abilities of the group, and if this is the case, your guides will do their best to capitalize on what is available to the group and facilitate a different and equally memorable learning opportunity.
Your guides cannot control the weather, and out here, they can hardly predict it either!
We’ve done a 5-day Intro to Mountaineering and 5-day backpacking on the Upper Goat Trail with SEAG. The guides were very experienced, super-friendly, and very motivating. We learned a lot about mountaineering skills on the first trip – an ideal introduction to mountaineering! We now feel ready to hit the mountains on our own! The guides did a great job at identifying our strengths and weaknesses and working on them with us, expanding our comfort zones in the mountains by a lot every single day of the trip.