5 Things Working as a Backpacking Guide Taught Me About Climbing and Life

The boys from Antioch, TN on top Mt. Antero

I've spent the last few summers working for a backpacking outfitter that guides groups of teenagers on weeklong treks through Colorado's backcountry and up some of the state's tallest mountains. Some of my most fun, challenging, and rewarding experiences have been in those mountains and these are some of the lessons I've learned.

1. How to be miserable: Growing up backpacking with my friends, if a raccoon ate all our food or the weather wasn't to our liking, we could hike out in the middle of the night and drive to Waffle House. When you're guiding a group of teens through the backcountry and a bear eats half of your week's meals or the stoves don't work or it has rained and hailed for the last seventy-two hours, you just have to deal. Sometimes you fester in a tent all day. Sometimes you hike with a missing toenail. Sometimes you don't eat so your clients can. Sometimes you remain in a perpetual state of damp, soggy, misery because you gave a forgetful client all your Gore-Tex rain gear. Embrace the sufferfest.

You learn how to suffer and how to be okay with it because, well, you're in it and sometimes the only way to get down is to keep going up.

Our group from Texas riding Antero's ridge

2. How to think about ethics: Nobody likes to think of their human behavior as destructive behavior. Whether it is pooping in the desert, picking Columbines in the high country, or accidentally leaving a Clif Bar at your last rest stop. But human action has environmental consequences and we have to be mindful of that. A fed bear is a dead bear because they become dependent on human food. A water reservoir is ruined because a fragile ecosystem was contaminated by human waste. Or maybe it's just robbing another hiker of the joy of seeing a beautiful rare wildflower.

Backpacking ought to make us aware of how our presence has lasting effects on natural spaces. Are all those bolts necessary at the new crag? Should I keep climbing at the boulderfield whose landing areas have been eroded and trampled away? How and where were these ingredients grown for this delicious burger? Leave No Trace goes far beyond a week in the woods.

Jamie helps Daniel across a flooded creek on a pre-season scouting trip of Mt. Ouray

3. How to move light and fast: I got sucked into the super-ultralight backpacking scene pretty quickly in high school. One weekend trip with an external frame and an Army Surplus tent and I was convinced: lighter is better. We made our own stoves, ditched most of our gear, and covered a lot of miles. And though my Gossamer Gear G6 "trashbag with shoulder straps" backpack wasn't practical for guiding,  I was pretty adamant about not carrying anything I didn't absolutely need. I wasn't about to carry a watermelon to summit just to say I did.

Backpacking inspires a certain level of minimalism that can help one achieve one's goals but also leave less impact along the way (see #2). "What can I ditch to shed base weight pounds?" "How much gear do I really need to take up this route?" "How many articles of clothing does my closet actually need? And do I have to buy them brand new?" Do we really need that much stuff?

Robin and I talk about the weather and our fastest route through the snow on Ptarmigan Peak

4. The view from the summit is better together: I've cried in the high country twice. The second time was last summer taking a group of students from West Memphis, Arkansas up Mt. Rinker. Rinker is one of our longest mountains by mileage and this group chose to do it in a five day push instead of our standard six. "Rinker the Stinker" is hard by any means but it was exceptionally hard for one particular student: a sizable offensive lineman we'll call Michael.

I hiked in the back all summit day with Michael and two other guys, taking turns -- quite literally -- carrying him up the mountain. His feet struggled to move, his legs struggled to lift, his lungs wrestled to breathe. Michael legitimately believed he couldn't do it. He told me at least 100 times, "I can't do it." And when he finally did it, he wept. And I did too. Looking back, I recall the wise words spoken on another mountain, "It's easy to shout encouragement from a distance, it's another to walk alongside someone and speak words of hope." 

West Memphis boys sharing the load, still in the valley below Rinker

5. How to appreciate not making it to the top: Sometimes you summit. Sometimes you don't. Backpacking has taught me that failure can be a powerful positive force. As a guide, few things are harder than telling a group of wide eyed students from Texas or Arkansas or Louisiana -- who worked hard and did everything right -- that their climb ends prematurely. That they're not going to summit. The mountains have a way of normalizing failure and they do not discriminate.

The first time I cried in the mountains was telling a group of young students from Houston, Texas that by no fault of their own they were not going to summit. Yes, weather was rolling in but we could have pushed it. No, we didn't summit that day because of a verbally abusive father who came as a parent chaperone. We ended our day early, below the summit ridge, to hopefully avoid long-term emotional wounds. It was hard. It was even harder when a teary eyed eighth grader with a mild form of autism came up and hugged me and the other guide, ecstatic for how far he had come. I looked at the other guide, our lips quivered, and we both cried. I learned that day that the mountain doesn't show us who we are but who we want to be, and I want to be like him.

Nothing feels better than standing on top of a mountain but few things are more powerful than the lessons learned from a failed attempt. Embrace risk. Try hard. Take chances. Fail often. Succeed next time.