This is Donny Roth’s Chad Vander Ham Memorial Fund video application, which paid for his AMGA Ski Mountaineering Guide Exam during the winter 2014. Footage courtesy of Sweetgrass Productions, Darcy Turenne — and some of Donny’s own. This video was shot on location at Golden Alpine Holidays in British Columbia, near Haines, Alaska, and various […]

A news piece on Joey Thompson becoming an American Mountain Guide/IFMGA Guide appears in GUIDE Bulletin #3, spring/summer 2014. This is the full interview with Thompson. Joey Thompson’s journey to full AMGA/IFMGA certification took a tough ten years. “It was rigorous, demanding, and very expensive,” he told the AMGA in a recent interview. “I sacrificed a lot.” […]

Icelander Einar Ísfeld Steinarsson first started considering IFMGA certification in 2002. But at that time Iceland was not a member country of the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association. However, as part of a mountain and para-rescue team, where he trained with the U.S. Marines in winter survival in the Icelandic interior, Greenland, and the United […]

Lisa Van Sciver received the 2013 Julie Cheney Culberson Educational Fund, which paid for her Rock Instructor Course I began this year’s guiding season with AMGA’s Rock Instructor Course. This course offered me ten days of learning and working with others to enhance my guiding skills. The instructors offered a wealth of knowledge and constantly […]

Lyra Pierroti, the 2012 Julie Cheney Culberson Educational Fund recipient, sent us photos from her Rock Exam.

By Emilie Drinkwater, the 2012 Patagonia Woman’s Scholarship recipient Two winters ago I found myself slightly off-route and desperately run-out on a rime covered rock face not far below the summit of New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington.  I glanced down at my two clients, huddled together while wind and icy sleet pellets blasted them from above. […]