Taking the AMGA's SPI Course

What is the difference between a pizza and a professional guide? The pizza feeds a family of four.

This joke, told to us by Patrick Weaver, our instructor, briefly lightened the mood during our morning hike on day two of the American Mountain Guide Association’s Single-Pitch Instructor course. Mostly, the atmosphere of the course was very serious. Many of the scenarios in the course revolve around something going wrong, and a rescue. The guide’s job is to anticipate what could possibly go wrong, assess the risk, act responsibly and with the safety and enjoyment of the clients in mind, and be skilled in rescue techniques. I experienced the course as extremely intense—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Two weeks later, I am still digesting the mountain of information that was packed into the course.



The SPI Course

The SPI three-day training course is the first step to becoming a professional climbing guide. The second step is a two-day assessment, aka, the exam. The three-day course curriculum covers 19 sessions. They are listed in the AGMA SPI 2009 program manual, which was part of the course materials. For each session, the manual also provides the goals, required equipment, and a rationale. The session topics are:

Session 1: SPI and AMGA Program Overview
Session 2: Professionalism
Session 3: Equipment
Session 4: Knots and Hitches
Session 5: Belaying
Session 6: Protection and Anchoring
Session 7: Teaching Skills
Session 8: Selecting the Climbing Site
Session 9: Site Organization and Group Management
Session 10: Base-Managed Sites
Session 11: Assistance Skills— Base-Managed Sites
Session 12: Programming and Risk Management
Session 13: Instructor Demo Lead Climb
Session 14: Top-Managed Sites
Session 15: Lowering
Session 16: Assistance Skills—Top-Managed Sites
Session 17: Rappelling
Session 18: Climbing Movement
Session 19: Review Session


Experiencing the SPI Course

I had become interested in the course because I am increasingly taking students climbing. Taking students from the University of Pittsburgh and the Explorers Club of Pittsburgh climbing has been a good experience for me. I have learned so much every time I have led a rope team. However, I am also very aware of the mistakes I have made. Some of them are etched into my memory because of their great potential for disaster. It is true that field experience provides tremendous opportunity for learning. However, how should we structure our learning so that it does not occur at the expense of those who trust us as their guides and teachers?

After several years of learning from friends and from experience, it had become time for me to contrast my knowledge with some kind of standard. I was also curious about what it entails to be a professional climbing guide. Talking throughout the season with Diane Kearns of The Gendarme and Seneca Rocks Climbing School, and Tom Cecil of Seneca Rocks Mountain Guides, I decided the SPI course was what I needed. Luckily I had enough experience, in terms of years climbing and the number of traditional routes I have led, to fulfill the pre-requisites for taking the course. Before I’ll be able to proceed to the assessment, however, I will have to lead a lot more routes at 5.6 and above; and that has given me an incentive this season to try harder to break into that grade.

Patrick Weaver owns Appalachian Mountain Institute, and usually guides and teaches in North Carolina or Kentucky. Because several climbers from the east coast had expressed an interest in the SPI course, Diane Kearns had facilitated bringing Patrick to Seneca Rocks to teach the course. This was an advantage for us students because we would be able to learn in a familiar environment.


After several months of planning, I finally drove to Seneca on the evening of September 11, 2009.


Day One

I began my day with cappuccino and a delicious quiche and an impromptu lesson from Tom Cecil at the Ground Up. Tony Barnes was away for a trip, and I was surprised to be served breakfast by Tom, who was assisted by Gina. While brewing my coffee, Tom inquired what I was up to this weekend. A good question, since I was by myself, and trad climbers usually come in pairs. I told him that I was taking the SPI course. I also shared that I had spend the previous day in front of my computer practicing the Munter Mule knot, which I knew I would need but continued to have trouble with. While I was eating my breakfast, Tom disappeared into the climbing gym and returned with a short rope and a carabiner. He clipped the carabiner to the armrest of my chair and asked me to tie a Munter Mule. I did manage to get one done, but what the computer animation did not show were the variation and reasons Tom proceeded to demonstrate for me. Thus my learning experience got off to a good start.

After breakfast, I headed over to the Gendarme, where I had a chance to briefly catch up with Diane. Her big news was that Arthur had been injured in a motorcycle accident and was wheel-chair bound. What a shock this must be for couple who so enjoys being physically active. I also met the course instructor, Patrick, and the three other students, John, Jonathan, and Sean.

Every day of the course, we had lecture sessions outside of the Gendarme. Every day we hiked to the rocks for applied lessons, with increasing amounts of gear. Patrick did not teach the sessions strictly in the order they are listed above. Thus, on the first day, we learned about equipment, protection, selecting the climbing site, top-managed sites, and lowering.

My favorite lesson was the lesson on equipment. Patrick had brought a big bag full of old gear, and asked us to each grab five pieces and tell him what, if anything, was wrong with them. I will never again pocket a piece of booty without carefully looking for the signs of wear and tear I learned about during this session. I also successfully, meaning to AMGA standards, built a gear anchor with a cordelette in a location that Patrick chose for me.

The first day of the course was quite cold and windy. Temperatures on the Lowers Slabs probably only reached into the fifties. And while I usually like colder temperatures for climbing, the temperatures had still been in the eighties in Pittsburgh. This sudden change perhaps contributed to draining my energy as the day went on. And the overwhelming amount of information and my attempts to translate them into practice most definitely wore me down. I felt like a student again, rather than the master! At the end of the day, Patrick did start into the assistance skills for top-managed sites, but called it a day when he noticed how exhausted we had become after the ten hours we had been studying and practicing in the cold wind.

We retired to the front porch for some well deserved pizza and beer. And we enjoyed the companionship of other climbers who had been out on the rock climbing that day.


Day Two

On day two we started even earlier than on the first day to make up for not completing enough material on the first day. We met at 7:45 am in front of the Gendarme, and did not return until about 7 pm, making for an eleven-hour-long study day. We did our practical sessions on the Lower Slabs again, in slightly warmer temperatures and less wind. I did not feel quite the same amount of mental overload and fatigue than the day before. Many of the topics we covered were more familiar to me: knots and hitches, belaying, teaching skills, base-managed sites, including the required assistance skills. Patrick also got to do his instructor demo lead climb, on “Scuttle”. We watched him jealously, since this weekend did not include any climbing for us.

I did bugger up one of my assignments that day. I was to build a top-rope anchor with a static rope…but the rope we had picked up in the Gendarme was shorter than it should have been, the rock above the route was rotten and did not take pro, one tree was too close to the edge, and the other, off-center from the climb. With enough time and gear I would have been able to rig an anchor, but trying to use the techniques I had just learned in a situation that was not straightforward, I was so slow that Patrick eventually took over. On the third day, he did demonstrate to us that he can build an anchor with a 100 foot static in just three minutes. That was quite impressive and gives me the gold standard for efficient performance that I can now strive for.


In another exercise, I had to rescue Sean, who pretended to be stuck about 15 feet up a route. I had to take over the belay from his belayer, ascend the rope to Sean, than bring him down with me. I got it all done, which was satisfying. Yet I did not do it well enough. Sean descended by about 3 feet during my rescue. If he had had a foot stuck in a crack for instance, I would have broken it during my rescue. More practice is needed on this scenario as well…

The evening was fun and grew quite late because after class was over, we decided to head to Hellbender, a Mexican restaurant in Davis. Patrick volunteered to drive and loaded all of us into his van. We spent the ride decompressing by talking more climbing, and dinner stuffing ourselves with monster-sized, tasty burritos.


Day Three

On the third day, we hiked up to Luncheon Ledge. I rejoiced, because I had to build another top-rope anchor to make up for my failure from the day before, and the place Patrick chose for me was right at the bottom of Old Ladies, a route I am quite familiar with. My anchor, part traditional, part tree, went up quickly enough, and my gear placements were pronounced bomber. So far so good.


Next, Jonathan and I were assigned to set up a releasable rappel. Unfortunately, we had both forgotten the set-up that Patrick had shown us at the end of day one, and we rigged a regular rappel. Patrick quizzed us for a while to jog our memory about the releasable rappel, but quickly realized we were drawing a blank. It was quite frustrating to me that I couldn’t reproduce something I had just learned two days ago. But then again, I told myself, I’d only seen it done once. I found this set-up particularly confusing because it involves three ropes. Basically, there is rope everywhere you look, and it is critical to do steps in the right order and to keep the area around the master point well organized. Patrick showed us how to rig this scenario once again, and we accomplished to do it by ourselves shortly thereafter. Jonathan and I also both successfully practiced the releasable rappel scenario with back-up belay by the guide on a second rope, which assumed that our client had become stuck on rappel.

While working through our lessons on Luncheon Ledge, we saw Tom Cecil getting ready and then lead up “Crack of Dawn”. That was a treat and a diversion. (For the record, Patrick did not watch Tom climb so as not to spoil his opportunity for an onsight of this route.)

My favorite lesson of the day was the one on climbing movement. Patrick had clearly put a lot of thought into the lesson plan, and he had good demonstrations to make his points. At about 4 pm, we headed back to the Gendarme for final lessons on SPI and AMGA programs, and professionalism.

The ten-hour day ended with a private, personal skills assessment of each of us by the instructor. (If you are, or have ever been Catholic, think confessional….). I appreciated the opportunity to talk about what I had learned, and what I self-assessed I have yet to learn. Patrick provided me with valuable feedback. He also emailed me a few days after the course feedback in writing on an AMGA candidate evaluation form; I understand that it will become part of my AMGA record.

After we had sorted our gear, and exchanged email addresses, it was time to part ways.


Reflections

The course required more stamina and concentration than I had expected. I woke up on the second day thinking I must really love climbing if I am putting myself through this strenuous experience. The course felt more like a review course for the exam than a training course to me. The AMGA materials had been quite explicit that this was not going to be a belay course, not an anchor course, and not a knots course. Instead, proficiency in these areas was expected of the course participants. That was clear to me and I felt knowledgeable in these areas. But there is still so much more to learn, and the pre-existing knowledge and skill of us four course participants was quite different. Some of the lessons learned on the SPI course carry over into my life as a professor and educator. Now I appreciate once again the difference between a professor, who has had a lifetime to grapple with ideas and concepts, and a student learning about them for the very first time. And then we profs like to throw new combinations of problems at students on the exam…and act surprised when they can’t put it all together. I realized it is plain hard to repeat a new skill correctly on the first try, even harder to integrate a brand-new skill into a variation of the original scenario. I must have known this back in the day. How could I forget.

The course is no substitute for experience. There are many skills that I will begin to incorporate into my climbing repertoire. I hope that by practicing them and experiencing them in many different situations, I will become efficient at executing them even under pressure. An important lesson that I am now aware of is to always take in the big picture of a situation. I am usually good at that, but as pressure on me increases, my focus narrows and this is when I start to make mistakes. Better mastery of the technical skills will free up some of my brain power for the task of maintaining the big picture.

The course sets a high standard for professional certification. I came to understand why guiding is sometimes also referred to as rockcraft. I also learned that the difference between a climber and a professional guide is this: Climbers carry a guidebook, professional guides carry a notebook. If you are planning to take this course, be prepared to take plenty of notes and photos. This is especially important since the technical section of the SPI course manual is not very extensive or detailed.


The course emphasizes leadership and managerial skills. I enjoy contemplating these in great detail in my current role as instructor in an academic leadership seminar. The SPI course was a good fit to what I already know, and gave me new perspectives and insights on informed consent, group management, and risk management.

Will I take the exam? I don’t know. After a lifetime of taking exams in academia, you’d think I’d be used to taking exams. But on the contrary, I’ve sort of grown averse to them. On the other hand, if I truly master all of the material, the exam should be a breeze for me, and I should go for it on principal. I just haven’t been able to make up my mind about it. And then there is the issue of leading more 5.6s on gear. Perhaps next season…

Photo credit: The photo of the Munter Muler on my harness was taken by John; Jonathan took the one of me lowering.