26 mai 2015

The Smith Rock Climbing Guides Are The Mentors Of This Generation

By Tammie Caldwell


Arizona is home to some of the most beautiful cliffs on the planet, and they have become famous through Hollywood movies dating back. Nestled within this landscape is a school that was established in the early 1980s, and continues to take in students to this day. The most important personalities in this school are the Smith Rock climbing guides.

The school possesses the coveted accreditation from the American Mountain Guides Association. Their classroom is outside, and their goal is to teach students to seek out that place both inside and outside themselves, where the sky reaches down to kiss the land. First, the student must overcome their own agoraphobias as well as their animal instinct which tells them their feet belong on the ground.

The standard SRCS guide has many years of experience as climbers, having gone from Nepal to the Andes Mountains and thrown themselves against their cliffs. The experience they bring to the people wishing to perfect these skills helps to enhance the lives of the students, who may go on one day to save lives during a climb. It is a special sort of person, one willing to expand their own limitations by engaging in this particular hobby.

Most of them started to climb as children of parents who already understood the benefit of challenging the elements of land, wind and sky, as well as the limitations we all tend to set within ourselves. As children we lack the fear associated with danger, and little ones are a pleasure to watch. Go to a repelling park where people practice this hobby and one will find many children able to climb in seemingly impossible directions.

The AMCA does not recommend that small children be present for any serious climb; however, the average teenager is ready both mentally and physically to attend these classes. The life skills they can acquire while under the tutelage of a guide will make them the leaders of tomorrow. These young people can go on one day to provide mentoring and instruction to other adults interested in acquiring these skills.

For anyone with weight issues, fifteen minutes engaged in a serious climb will provide them with the same workout they might get in an hour-long fitness tape. The soreness and tightness of muscles is a pleasant sensation for the human body. Engaging in this hobby one or two times a week will provide a person with all they need to meet their physical fitness goals.

As a hobby, it can provide a person with the strength, stamina, and confidence they need to face any challenge. The guide can help the student learn to plan out a climb, and determine how much equipment should be carried. It challenges personal limitations while also sharpening the mind and strengthening the body.

Naysayers always love to claim such hobbies are too dangerous. These people prefer to stay inside watching television, and living their lives vicariously through the passive viewing of actors on a screen. However, a climber knows that life is dangerous, tomorrow is not guaranteed, and the only thing we take with us at the end is the experience we gained through active participation.




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