Canada West Mountain School, Inc

Verified by N49

I left a Complete Mountaineering course after day four. On the plus side, I found the guides to be great guys, friendly, good with the group, and at-home on the rock and in the backcountry. My problem was that there were safety-related red flags from the beginning. I tried to chalk it up to style differences, but ultimately I lost confidence. I got a bad feeling about continuing, and my concerns were a big contributor to my decision to leave the course. Here’s some of what I saw:

Pre-course briefing
 Klemen invited students to bring their own ropes if they had them. I was surprised. I can’t imagine CWMS wants to assume responsibility for the quality of students’ ropes at any time, especially on an intro course.
 Despite the course being marketed to include it, I was disappointed that we never covered “planning a multi-day objective” either before or during the course, at least not by day four. We finished the pre-course meeting in about an hour. It would’ve been a perfect time to go over that piece of the curriculum. There was nothing covered on map/compass/altimeter navigation techniques either (at least by the time I left on day four).

On-course
 There was no discussion of care of ropes, e.g., don’t stand on it, inspect after each use, check for dead spots, change ends, etc.
 There was no discussion of proper helmet wearing, e.g., proper angle, snug fit, chin strap, etc., with predictable results.
 I observed the lead guide routinely standing on the climbing ropes. I was dumbstruck to see him breaking such a fundamental rule of rope care. The newbies on the course were oblivious to this poor role modeling, and are likely to repeat it.
 Knots were instructed once, quickly, and I did not see them checked for neatness after the first day.
 I did not see any detailed checking of harnesses after the first day.
 The only back-up on rappel for these beginners was a prussik, briefly intro'd. There was no separate belay. I recognize that rappelling without a separate belay line might be standard procedure for alpine descents. On this course, observing the participants and the overall lack of attention to detail, I raise it as a question.
 There was no instruction in rappelling.
 On day two, the intern was not anchored while monitoring a ~50 metre vertical rappel on an exposed ledge at Smoke Bluffs in Squamish, BC.
 At the same rappel site, the intern expected students to pass him, unprotected, to the outside, and tie into the rappel, leaving them more exposed than the intern.

Fundamental miscues like these eroded my confidence. I didn’t have confidence the other students were developing real situational awareness, as they saw their guide(s) role model climbing practices I had strong reservations about. There were enough missing fundamentals that I made the choice to turn back rather than to put myself into a situation my gut told me to avoid.

Once I got back home, I wanted a reality check. Was I off base? Was it just me or would other climbers see the above points as a problem too? I raised the question on a couple of Internet climbing forums. Rest assured Brian that I didn’t name any names or give details about the course location. Responses, however, indicated universal agreement that the above-mentioned examples reflect bad form, and ultimately are real safety issues.