While my fellow Crested Butte Mountain Guides are home getting soaked in the apparently never ending spring showers, I’ve found myself saturated here in the birthplace of alpinism, Chamonix, France. This summer, I’m on assignment (sabbatical!?) here in Chamonix pursuing the coveted IFMGA/UIAGM certification by participating in the AMGA Advanced Alpine Guides Course and spending some time developing my high mountain guiding skills. I won’t go into too much detail about Chamonix here, but my daily routine consists stopping by the bakery for a pain au chocolat, then riding a tram 9000′ (yes that’s 9 thousand feet) and climbing the best routes of my life (literally) and returning home before dark – not bad, eh!

5.11 Splitter at 12,000ft! My hands may never recover...

Check out this video of myself and course participant Kip Davis “training” a little too hard on Mont Blanc du Tacul…

As of right now we have completed day 5 of the 12 day course and this morning was characterized by yours truly breaking trail through 25cm of fresh snow across the glacier in front of countless groups gunning for the route. Despite the fact that my photos depict blue skies, the last few days have been quite the opposite. Heavy rain, snow up high, and cooler temperatures are making the course feel even more “alpine” than usual.
Regular followers of the CBMG guide blog know that these AMGA courses tend to be a little intense (<-read: I’m worked).

Hopefully, when it’s all said and done CBMG guests will have a better alpine guide and a new climbing destination.

Mike Bromberg

cbguides

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 8:03 am and is filed under Alpine Mountaineering, Guide Blog, Ice Climbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.