Following Alpine Rock Course

The 2024 course is posted here.

This course prepares you to participate as a follower on basic rock climbs that reach alpine summits in the Pacific Northwest. 

If you are familiar with other Mountaineers courses, this course is effectively just the rock component of the larger Basic Alpine Climbing course.  It's useful for students who want to participate on Basic Rock climbs, but do not wish to take the entire Basic Alpine Climbing course to do so, as they either do not currently have an interest in glacier travel, or, they already have glacier-travel experience and don't want to repeat that portion of the larger Basic course.  Either way, you are welcome here!

Prerequisite skills for starting the course:

• Experience moving through scramble terrain.  (Applicants need to either be a graduate from the Mountaineers Scramble course, or have equivalent experience.)
  • By "scramble terrain" we mean terrain that's rugged enough to require use of hands, but not hazardous enough to require roping-up for.  The goal of the course is to climb technical rock routes in the alpine; and off-trail travel and scrambling are inherently required to get to those alpine rock routes in the first place, before we even arrive at the place where we get out the rope.  We just want to ensure that everyone's comfortable moving through that kind of terrain as a prerequisite.
  • In terms of "equivalent experience", we're looking for you to tell us about a few different times you've been in the mountains and scrambled through some 3rd class or 4th class terrain before.  Also, the Mountaineers Scramble Course does teach some basic ice axe & crampon skills, so we're also looking for you to tell us about a few times you've walked on a snow slope where an ice axe and/or crampons were prudent.
• Basic Ice Axe & Crampon experience on sloped snow
  • has practiced a self-arrest with a basic mountaineering ice axe 
  • has practiced glissading with a basic mountaineering ice axe
  • has walked on snow with crampons on
• At least some top-rope belay experience (i.e. a belay card from any indoor climbing gym)
  • Our instructors will be relying on you to belay them at times.  Belaying a lead climber will be important later in the course, so we appreciate if you have prior lead-belay experience, but it is okay if you only have top-rope belay experience at the time of application.  We'll help teach you the differences between top-rope belay and lead belay, as long as you're starting with a good foundation of top-rope belay experience.
  • Climbing ability is not super important for this course.  The routes we'll be climbing in the alpine are rated 5.6 and below, and are often more akin to scramble terrain that would be high-consequence, so a rope is used for safety even though they're relatively "easy."  If you're able to cleanly climb a 5.8 on top-rope in the gym, you should be fine.  Of course, climbing at higher difficulties is beneficial in general, but it is not required for this particular course.
• An adequate level of physical fitness for mountaineering. 
  • Alpine climbs often mean 12 hour days, 30lb packs, and ~4000'+ elevation gain.  Part of this course will involve a fitness test, which requires going up the Mt Si trail (from parking lot to treeline) in under 2 hours while carrying a pack that's  20% of your body weight.

Skills taught in this course:

• Discussion of gear appropriate for alpine climbing.
• Some basic knots relevant to climbing, especially rope coiling
• A brief review of belay skills, how to belay a lead climber
• A backup technique for belaying if you've lost your belay device
• Belay escape.  (A skill that's an element of self rescue, although complete rescue skills are beyond the scope of this course.)
• Rappelling  (how to setup an extended rappel, and how to maximize safety)
• A backup technique for rappelling if you've lost your belay device
• Cleaning trad gear  (i.e. how to remove trad gear from the rock)
• The mutlipitch sequence, and multipitch transitions 
• If we can squeeze it in, we'll also cover some other uses of the rope that can come up in the alpine, including how to use a prusik to self-belay on a fixed line that crosses some higher-consequence scramble terrain.  And, how to use a pair of prusiks to climb the rope itself if it is free-hanging vertically.

What's NOT taught in this course:

This course does NOT teach:

• How to belay, starting from scratch.  We welcome relative-beginners, but we really need you to come in with some belay experience.  If you've never belayed before at all, consider asking a local rock gym (like Vertical World or Stone Gardens.) They offer brief courses that teach how to top-rope and belay in the gym.  Then go to the gym a handful of times with a friend, and pretty soon at least top-rope belaying will be second nature.
• Scramble skills.  Students are expected to come into the course with some prior experience moving through some 3rd and 4th class scramble terrain.
• Ice axe & crampon usage.  Along with the scramble skills, we are going to encounter sloped snow at times on our way to alpine rock climbs, and we need students to come in with some experience using these tools.  Especially because none of this course's teaching workshops are on snow, so we have no opportunity to teach these skills, but the resulting alpine climbs likely will involve snow & these skills.
• Glacier travel.  Glacier-travel skills are neither taught in this course, nor are they a prerequisite. Most applicants to this course either have previous glacier-travel experience, or have no interest in glacier-travel (yet.) Otherwise, those applicants would be better served taking the larger “Basic Alpine Climbing” course.
• How to lead climb.  Neither leading on bolts, nor leading on trad gear is taught during this course.  However, if your ultimate goal is to learn to lead trad, this course does cover a lot of skills you should know before you get into trad climbing, and is still a valuable stepping stone on your journey to get there.
• Self rescue.  Or at least, not a complete skill set to fully prepare you for self rescue in a multipitch rock setting.  The course does teach belay escape, which is a key part of self rescue, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Requirements to graduate:

• To qualify to graduate from Intro to Alpine Rock, you'll also need to complete a few supporting courses/acivities:
  • Wilderness First Aid (WFA) certification.  (a 16 hour weekend course that you must sign up for separately)
  • Wilderness Navigation or Equivalency
  • Low-Impact Recreation course (an online course)
  • Spend one day doing an activity that represents Stewardship of the wilderness.  Participating in a WTA Trail Work Party is the most popular option.
• Instructional component:
  • Attendance at all the core instructional activities of the course (the 5 weekday evenings, 2 full days on weekends)
  • Some of the later instructional activities will include pass/fail evaluations of skills taught earlier.  Must pass all evaluations to continue.
• Fitness component:
  • Before you can sign up for climbs, you need to pass a fitness test, which requires going up the Mt Si trail (from parking lot to treeline) in under 2 hours while carrying a pack that's  20% of your body weight.
• Completion of one successfully-summitting Basic Rock climb with the Mountaineers club during summer of the same year you attended the instructional component

Time Commitment

• A few additional supporting courses/activities are required:
  • Wilderness First Aid (WFA) certification.  (A 16-hour weekend course.  Separate sign up.)
  • Low Impact Recreation course (a 1-hour online course)
  • One day of a Stewardship activity
• Ongoing self-driven physical conditioning is strongly recommended
  • doing something to gain at least 2000' at least once every week is strongly recommended as a minimum bar to build & maintain fitness
  • We gently recommend climbing at an indoor climbing gym once a week or so.  It's not required per se, but it will likely increase your enjoyment of the course.
• The core instructional content of the course:
  • 5 weekday-evening sessions at the Mountaineers Program Center in Magunson Park  (these will be sometime in April & May, schedule TBD)
  • 1 full day on a weekend at the Mountaineers Program Center in Magunson Park
  • 1 more full day field trip to Mt Erie, a lovely crag where we can practice our skills on real rock <5 minutes from the road
• At least one actual alpine rock climb during summer 2024 (may require a couple of summer weekends)
  • Participating in at least one successfully-summitting Basic Rock climb is required to be considered a graduate of this course.  However, in order to get one successfully-summitting one, you'll likely need to attempt more than one, as weather-cancellations happen, turn-arounds happen, etc.  Climb sign-up is separate from course sign-up.  The list of available trips is here, and will likely grow as the summer months get closer.  But there are also a lot of students from many courses all trying to sign up for these climbs, so be sure to jump on opportunities as soon as they open, and be extra polite to the leaders who are graciously posting these.
• Optional extras:
  • An evening meet & greet and gear-talk:  An optional additional a weekday evening before the core instructional content of the course happens
  • Extra skill-practice evenings:  Depending on student & instructor enthusiasm for them, we might set up additional and optional evenings to spend more time practicing the same skills, for anyone who's interested
  • Extra conditioning hikes:  Depending on student & instructor enthusiasm, we might set up additional & optional group hikes, maybe after work on weeknights, or maybe on a rainy weekend, to help anyone who's interested improve their fitness

What is a Basic Rock climb?

A "Basic Rock" climb is shorthand the Mountaineers use for trip categorization.  It refers to a route that is:

• alpine (i.e. it reaches the summit of a mountain, and thus inherently involves long approach hikes, off-trail travel, and scrambling over rocky ground and/or snow before reaching the climbing route itself.)
• involves the use of a rope and trad gear as a follower (Instructors will bring and place the rope and trad gear, and will be lead-climbing.  Students will belay the instructors.  Students won't be placing trad gear, but will be removing ("cleaning") the gear from the rock.)
• climbs relatively easy rock (at most, climbing moves rated 5.6)
• climbs multiple pitches (to oversimplify a bit, a pitch is the distance our rope length allows us to travel.  Doing multipitch transitions allow us to climb routes that are longer than our rope.   Most, but not all, Basic Rock routes are 3 pitches long.)
• almost always require rappelling to get back down

To give a concrete example, Kangaroo Temple is a classic Basic Rock climb.  We would go as a party of 4 to 6 people, made up of student & instructor pairs.  A typical Kangaroo Temple climb involves a 3 hour drive from Seattle to Washington Pass the night before the climb, camping or sleeping in our cars somewhere nearby, and starting the approach hike at 5:00am with ~30lb packs.  Lingering snowfields may be present on slopes there through July, potentially requiring us to walk with crampons and a basic ice axe in hand as a precaution against slippery footing.  As we get closer to the rock tower we're aiming for, the terrain begins to steepen, and requires rocky scrambling for a bit.  (e.g. class 3, where hands are required, but the movement is still easy & low-consequence, so the rope is not yet required.)   The scrambling takes us to a notch in the ridgeline right at the base of the steep rock face.  There, we get all the technical gear out of our backpacks, put on our harnesses, and rope up.  We climb 3 pitches of technical rock climbing, with the instructor leading each pitch, and the student following protected by a top-rope.  At the top of the rock climbing portion, a bit more scrambling is required to reach the true summit, with spectacular panoramic views.   All too soon it's time to leave that special place, so we do a series of 3 rappels, which takes us back to where we originally put our harnesses on.  Pack away the technical gear, and hike out.  A typical day is 12 hours car-to-car, broken down as ~4 hours to approach, ~3 hours to climb, ~2 hours to rappel (if 6 people and 3 rappels,) and ~3 hours to hike out.