Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday. I’m your host Ting Ting from Las Vegas. Today, our guest is Caroline George. I’d say every active and want-to-be female guide should listen to this episode multiple times. Caroline’s voice was soft and comforting, but the words were incredibly impactful. The wisdom came from the essence she extracted from life events and decades of mountain climbing and guiding. The conversations provoked me to look into myself honestly and asked the ultimate question of “why.”

Caroline, an IFMGA mountain guide based near Verbier in the Swiss Alps, has faced many curveballs, but the mountains have always been her refuge—a place to find balance, reconnect with herself, and rekindle her inner light.

Most recently, she faced an unimaginable loss: her life and love partner, Adam George, perished in a helicopter crash in the Swiss Alps. Now, as the sole parent to their child, she is learning how to navigate the mountains in this new reality—both as a guide and as someone deeply connected to the peaks that have shaped her life.

Though the mountains remain unchanged, we experience them differently as life evolves. Caroline is discovering a new way of inhabiting this space, adapting to her shifting world while staying true to her passion. Guiding has become an anchor, offering both stability and a sense of normalcy as she forges ahead on this new path.

Now, please enjoy this episode.

Caroline’s Links:

• Into the Mountains (website): www.intothemountains.com
• Instagram: carolinewaregeorge

Quotes:

• On this journey of grief and healing and rebuilding, I can see that the mountains is a place of grounding for me.
• It’s like my life is constantly being forcing me to go deeper and deeper and to figure out the essence of my identity by stripping all the things that no longer belong.
• I think it’s a really hard place for women…it’s violent when you have to adapt so much to who you’re not just to get a certification.
• I feel like I have met that mold that whole time to really work myself into the ground…And now in my latest situation of survival, after having lost my husband and being the sole parent to my child, I’ve had to revisit how is it possible for me to be a guide.
• As guides, we can do a way better job to protect our own lives with our clients by empowering them.
• A good metaphor for that is all the technical skills you learn are a little bit like the walls and the roof and the bedrooms in a house unless they’re inhabited by people. They’re just walls, there’s no life to it.
• You can’t say no all the time just But with critical thinking and your gut feeling and your intuition, your experience and your knowledge all combined, you have to have the ability to step out of this situation and say no.
• I really want it to be a lifelong career should my body enable me…through that job, you’re forced to stay healthy, to have somewhat of a healthy lifestyle. And, it keeps you fit to be out there in the mountains. It keeps you smart and alert and not be a couch potato. So, on some form or another, I think I will always do that.
• I think in life it’s about finding passion, finding a community that feeds your soul and from there everything is possible.

Amber’s Links:

• Amber wants to share her writing with you! To sign up for her newsletter or to contact her, follow this link! https://linktr.ee/ambersaffirmations
• A personal essay from 2018 all girls Mount Baker climb: https://mountainmadness.com/blog/among-women-in-the-mountains-a-female-guideâ-s-learning-from-an-all-girls-climb

Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday. This is your host Ting Ting from Las Vegas. Today our guest is Amber Smith.

Amber is a femme-queer AMGA Certified Rock Guide with over a decade of experience. Most summers you’ll find her at the Yosemite Mountaineering School, climbing grandiose granite walls with her guests. She is passionate about playful, trauma-aware, and embodiment-focused instruction, and she views climbing as an opportunity for powerful personal transformation. If you go climbing with her, she will encourage you to craft a positive affirmation to hone your power.

Before landing in Yosemite, she guided throughout the western United States. She has led glacier mountaineering and alpine rock objectives in Washington’s North Cascades, ski descents in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, sandstone crack climbs in Utah’s deserts, and girls’ climate science research expeditions on Alaska’s glaciers. In 2016, Amber earned a degree in Geography and wrote her undergraduate thesis on what she called “Feminist Outdoor Leadership: A Guide to Facilitation Strategies for Inclusion and Participant Empowerment in Outdoor Adventure.”

I enjoyed my conversations with Amber. Her thoughtfulness was evident when listening to her reflections on her life journeys. She is also inquisitive and not shy about experimenting with new ideas. She is keen on exploring her inner voices to facilitate her own growth and be tuned to others’ needs. Now please enjoy this episode with Amber.

What We Talked About

• Amber’s current, past, and future plans
• Amber’s Affirmation on guiding – be safe, have fun, try your best
• Doubts and questions about guiding as a profession
• Engrossed in the outdoor leadership program in college
• Feminist outdoor leadership
• From Oregon to Washington, stepping into commercial guiding and keep her foot in outdoor education
• Transitioning to Yosemite and guiding full time
• Loved the Yosemite climbing community
• Yosemite climbing and work cultures
• Hosted a webinar about working in Yosemite
• Thinking entrepreneurial – mental health and mindset fields
• Learn to Lead with mindfulness clinics
• Experiments / Curiosities on grief and climbing and guiding
• Affirmation in life – exercise your weakness, leverage your strengths, don’t worry about the looks
• 
  

Quote:

• Keep my priorities clear. And its number one, keep yourself and your guests safe. If that’s all I do at the end of the day, nobody had a great time, but at least we were safe, then that was a successful day.
• I’d say that’s the whole journey of this industry for me is building the confidence in my voice, trusting myself and figuring out how to be myself in these spaces while also still sort of meeting some of the expectations of what your employers and your clients may want from you.
• I’m definitely not [the best climbers in the world]. But what I am good at is supporting people in their climbing goals. And that’s what the job is actually about..
• I think that’s really rad that I’m an ebike commuter to my rock guiding job.
• I think we get a lot of burnout when we’re not being intellectually stimulated.
• I’m basically not like ingraining negative association with the experience. I’m keeping my association with the process positive. and by having these positive associations, then I want to keep doing it
• One of the most important attributes of a guide is that you need to be intuitive with your guests. It’s very customer service type job. And we need to be intuitively listening to what they need all day.

... More

EP 52 – Amber Smith – AffirMATIONs – Female Guides Requested Podcast

Show Notes:

Lindsay’s Links:

• www.fixguiding.com
• https://alpinist.com/newswire/womens-expedition-explores-new-routes-in-indias-zanskar-range/
• https://amga.com/meet-amga-lindsay-fixmer/

Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday. This is your host, Ting Ting, from Las Vegas. Today our guest is Lindsay Fixmer from Bozeman, Montana.

Lindsay Fixmer is an experienced alpine, ice, and rock climbing guide who has been guiding since 2006. She is on the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) Instructor Team, develops and teaches outdoor programming at Montana State University, and also instructs at indoor facilities. Lindsay spends her winters ice guiding in Montana and Wyoming, spring and fall at various rock venues in the western U.S., and splits her summers between Bozeman and the eastern Sierra. As an AMGA Certified Alpine and Rock Guide, Lindsay brings her passion for climbing to her work, inspiring her clients to excel, build confidence, hone skills, and meet their goals.

We dive deep into the interconnectedness among all different forms of climbing and how learning one can inspire the learning of others, and vice versa. I explored in depth Lindsay’s mission statement, how she emphasizes educating and inspiring people through patience and partnership. We talked about the balance of work and play, mentorship, and more. I learned so much from Lindsay, and listening to her describe ice climbing made me want to pick up ice tools again.

Things We Talked about:

• Climbing career started early
• Indoor versus outdoor climbing
• Potential side gig
• Lindsay’s mission statement
• A life-changing experience – 12 year old backpacked through Canyonlands
• All women’s trip to India and first ascents in Northern Himalayas
• Guiding and doing first ascents with Chicks Climbing and Skiing
• “Ice is my life” – Lindsay’s ice climbing journey
• The interconnectedness of rock climbing and ice climbing and all climbing
• Work/play balance
• Mentorship and Tom Hargus’s inspiring quote “the day I stop learning is the day I stop guiding.”
• Performance anxiety?

Quotes:

• If you enjoy watching people succeed and become more knowledgeable and more skilled, then it [guiding] is very rewarding work.
• I’ve been teaching ice climbing for a long time, but you’re always learning something new and the way that people respond to the words that you’re using and also the descriptors and the movement, you continually learn how people differently see things and respond.
• …even rock to ice. We say that they’re very different, but I don’t think that’s true because you’re either in or out of balance in life. So Our ergonomics don’t change. It’s just the medium.
• It is very much a partnership. you have to feel confident that your guide is with you and they can relate to you and understand and help you.
• Patience is a massive component of helping people succeed and opening that door to being more vulnerable and being okay with that.
• …when you really realize how small you are and how large the Earth and the universe is. And it was pretty amazing.
• Oftentimes you had to make adjustments based on the conditions and how to get off of something that you had climbed. It wasn’t always just V-thread really straightforward. There were some more interesting ways of getting off of things.
• Ice is always changing. It’s never the same. The routes always change, which is pretty cool.
• If you’ve shut yourself off to learning or just don’t want to do it anymore more. You’re on to something else in your life.

Show Notes:

Angel’s Links:

• Rock Iguana
• Coast to Bluff Recreation Access and Conservation
• Angel Robeldo’s Instagram

Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday! This is your host, Ting Ting. In this episode, I have guest Angel Robeldo from Rock Iguana, a guide service located in the Cayman Islands. Towards the end of last year, one of my SPI students told me he needed certification to work in the Caribbean, which piqued my interest. As soon as I knew the owner of the guide service was a woman, you can probably guess what happened next!

Angel was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She left Brazil in 2005 to discover the world and ended up discovering herself. She has climbed around the world and done a lot of high-altitude mountaineering, including in the Himalayas, Andes, and Denali. Angel has traveled through more than 80 countries but found Cayman Brac to be the perfect place to live and enjoy her lifestyle. Since 2013, she has promoted and helped develop rock climbing in the Cayman Islands. She also helped build a non-profit boulder gym in Grand Cayman where a climbing community started to grow. Angel is an AMGA Certified Single Pitch Instructor.

One might say Angel is truly living the dream, but I’d say that is the guaranteed result because she has always followed her mind and heart. Now please enjoy the episode of Angel Robeldo.

What We Talked About:

• From ocean to mountains and back to both ocean and mountains
• An injury changed Angel’s life trajectory
• Fulfilled her dream of living in the Caribbean
• Personal and Professional climbing journey in Cayman Brac
• Growing up in Brazil
• Fear of height | Fear of Exposure
• Where are the clients from?
• Climbing courses and adventure travel
• Climb Iguana & Coast to Bluff Recreational Access and Conservation
• Work & life balance
• Being away helps strengthen the love of her residence Cayman Islands
• Holiday guiding

Quotes:

• I was terrified of heights. And that was one of the biggest thing why I stick to climb because I want to investigate that fear and I want to go over that fear.
• I love to guide people afraid of heights. That’s my favorite because I know exactly where you are.
• Have the fear and go for it. And then suddenly there is no more fear.
• I keep doing what I love and what drives me and what makes me feel very alive.
• When you owe a guiding company when it’s just you working it’s way easier because you just have to manage you when it started to get big and they have all the employees it’s just like sometimes it’s way more work and no more money
• Most of the time what stop all of us doesn’t matter if you are on a female body, on a masculine body, all stop us is on our heads

Show Notes:

Amy’s Links:

• Fifth Class Climbing

Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday! I’m your host, Ting Ting. I’m currently working and playing in the Pacific Northwest, escaping the heat of Las Vegas. Early this year, I finally caught up with Amy Shore from Fifth Class Climbing, based in Bishop, California! And I’m excited to share our conversations with you.

Amy grew up in North Dakota and spent her young adult years traveling the world while pursuing her college degree in International Studies. After finding climbing at the age of 21, it became her life’s passion and has been a main focus of her life for almost two decades.

Bouldering, sport & trad climbing, establishing big wall first ascents in the Sierra and Patagonia, guiding 14,000 ft peaks… Amy loves the vast array of disciplines that climbing allows one to pursue. Establishing Fifth Class Climbing School in 2016 allowed her the freedom to guide what really inspired her, which was not big mountain objectives, but rather women’s events and courses that focus on teaching women to be independent climbers.

In 2021, Amy became the lead safety manager for a National Geographic TV show, combining guiding with rigging and logistics, and traveling the world to do it.

Most recently, Amy became a mom and now has a 20-month-old son. She still runs and guides for Fifth Class and is currently most interested in a new pursuit: projecting sport climbs. The day after our interview, Amy sent her first 5.13.

Things We Talked about:

• From Whitney Base Camp to Fifth Class Climbing
• Wanted to work with different clientele to focus more on instructions
• Instructed before she became a climber
• Upbringing – explored outdoors and tried different sports
• Travel and then Travel & Climb
• From pebble wrestling to big walls
• Mom & projecting single pitch sport climbs
• Training entered her life
• Guiding is an empowering profession
• Started her own business in 2016 – Fifth Class Climbing and School
• Rigging for TV shows
• Changes and transitions after having a kid
• Why Amy loves logistical challenges

Quotes:

• There’s a small amount that is a part of me that likes to suffer and push myself and see what I can do.
• When you’re in that kind of mindset of doing big wall first ascents and alpine climbing and then guiding, you’re in a very much no fall territory.
• I get to be the places I love being. I get to teach and I get to give people an amazing experience that is maybe once in a lifetime for them. maybe get them hooked so that they’re doing this all the time. and it was empowering
• It’s nice to be able to facilitate programs that people are excited about offering and helping them make that happen through the permitting and stuff.
• As adults, we kind of take ourselves seriously and as a kid, you just do what you want to do.
• That risk tolerance thing changing [has] been a really interesting part of it for me. And sometimes I think it’s good guiding wise because I do have a lower risk tolerance than I used to. And I think that I see things and maybe this is from spotting my son too, but I think I see things preemptively better than I used to.
• That’s why I really like doing the rigging work and the TV work as well is that I think I logistics is kind of my jam
• I love hearing that kind of feedback after guiding. And it’s a special industry we’re in. we get to help people realize their dreams.

Show Notes:

Alexis’s Links:

• @alexiskrauss – Alexis personal IG
• @riseoutsidecollective – Rise Outside IG
• @kinshipclimbingcollective – Kinship Climbing Collective IG
• Rise Outside Website
• The Transformative Power of Nature Connection | Alexis Krauss | TEDxBoston

Episode Intro:

Happy Wednesday! This is Ting Ting, and I’m currently in my home country, Taiwan, welcoming you to a new episode of the Female Guides Requested Podcast. I’m excited to announce that today’s guest is Alexis Krauss. Alexis wears many hats.

Alexis is a long-time lover of the outdoors and teaching, with a background in elementary education and human rights. She has been guiding outdoor adventures since 2016 and especially loves sharing the transformative power of nature with youth.

An avid climber, she is an AMGA Apprentice Rock Guide, a Single Pitch Instructor, and a NYS-licensed climbing and hiking guide.

She is an outdoor educator with Wild Earth, a New York non-profit that provides transformative outdoor experiences for youth in the Hudson Valley.

Alexis is also a co-founder of Kinship Climbing Collective, a climbing and leadership program for New York City girls and gender-expansive youth, and Rise Outside, a New York-based 501(c)(3)dedicated to creating access to outdoor adventures for underrepresented communities through inclusive and qualified mentorship.

Additionally, Alexis is a working musician and one-half of the band Sleigh Bells.

Chatting with her was so easy and fun. Her dedication and passion for uplifting youth and sharing the love of climbing were obvious. Without further ado, let’s enjoy the episode with Alexis Krauss.

Things We Talked about:

• Many hats – Sleigh Bells, Outdoor Education, Climbing etc. Things in different fields that connect
• How Alexis discovered outside climbing and why was that experience intense and life-changing
• Climbing and dancing
• Want to share this special thing and love to her community
• Alexis’s mentor at the Gunks
• Alexis’s always has a passion for working with young people
• Young Women Who Crush -> Kinship Climbing Collective -> Rise Outside
• The mentor and mentee relationships
• Time management
• Alexis’s personal experience taking an affinity AMGA Rock Guide Course (All women)
• Self and the community
• Motherhood

Photo credit: Trevor Riley

Show Notes:

Emma’s Links:

• Emma’s website: https://www.emmarwalker.com/
• Emma’s book: https://www.falconguides.com/9781493052783/dead-reckoning/
• AIARE website: https://avtraining.org/

Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, welcome back and happy Wednesday! This is your host, Ting Ting. Right now, I’m in my home country, Taiwan, teaching some rock climbing courses. Our guest today is Emma Walker. Emma spends a lot of time outdoors and currently serves as the Education Director for the American Institute for Avalanche Research & Education (AIARE).

Emma is a career outdoor educator with a background in curriculum design and a particular interest in accident analysis. A jill-of-all-trades, she has worked as a raft guide, avalanche educator, and in numerous other outdoor jobs, and has also made ends meet as a waitress, horse groom, and kindergarten teacher. She lives in Spring Green, Wisconsin, with her husband, son, and two badly behaved dogs.

Talking with Emma was so soothing; she answered all my questions with thoughtfulness and compassion. I gained so much knowledge from our conversations and couldn’t wait to incorporate all that wisdom into my daily guiding because, as she said, ‘good guiding is education.’ Now please enjoy this episode with Emma Walker.

Things We Talked about:

• The love of the outdoors stems from childhood
• Teaching runs in the family. Emma chose to be an educator but wanted to make sure she could spend much time outdoors
• The impact of the first NOLS course
• From Colorado to Alaska
• Place-based education
• Macro landscape VS. micro landscape
• What is Emma’s interpretation of experiential learning
• Emma’s short river guiding career
• Toughness doesn’t equate high risk tolerance
• What do we want to be remembered?
• What exactly does a curriculum specialist do?
• What does that mean by “student-centered”?
• How do we evaluate the effectiveness of a course?
• Adjust the avalanche education based on travel modes
• Why diversity is important in avalanche industry and other spaces?
• Emma’s book – DEAD RECKONING: LEARNING FROM ACCIDENTS IN THE OUTDOORS

Show Notes:

Angela’s Links:

• https://alpinist007.com/ (personal website)
• Angela Hawse takes helm of American Mountain Guides Association board as group leans on women to foster change in guiding culture

Episode Intro:

Dear listeners of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday. This is your host Ting Ting from Las Vegas. Today our guest is Angela Hawse.

Angela was the 6th woman in the U.S. to become an IFMGA mountain guide with a successful career spanning over three decades. She’s trained and examined aspiring guides for the AMGA for the past 19 years and served as the AMGA president for five. Angela’s led over 30 high altitude mountaineering expeditions to the world’s Greater Ranges and guided remote trips to the Arctic and Antarctic. She skied from Sweden to Norway across Lapland, reached the South Summit of Mt. Everest (500’ higher than K2) and has led numerous technical all-women’s ascents.

She’s currently on the board of the IFMGA and the 1st woman and non-European to join the Technical Commission. Angela has a Master’s Degree in International Mountain Conservation, is on the POW Alliance Team and a Black Diamond athlete. In 2011 she was awarded AMGA Guide of the Year and in 2022 received the AMGA Lifetime Achievement in Guiding Award.

I love that she considers herself successful in mountain guiding because she still loves the profession and is still in it for the same reason that she got into it initially. She established a lifelong love of playing in the mountains since she was a kid. Her curiosity let her explore all facets of life related to guiding, and she hardly found boredom. We talked about dealing with burnout, giving back to the communities, her AMGA work, changes in the environment and the industry in the past 30+ years, and making a guide career sustainable. I’m super inspired by all the wisdom Angela brought in. Now please enjoy this episode with Angela Hawse.

Things We Talked about:

• Has been guiding for 3.5 decades and still going strong
• Angele’s special sauce to keep her in the industry for this long
• Stay curious
• Diversify
• Mental bandwidth
• Childhood
• Prescott college and first role model
• Was a dedicated climber for many many years before thinking about guiding
• Various jobs from Outward Bound, an adjunct position in Prescott, working for different guide services so on and so forth
• Expeditions and giving back
• All women’s expeditions
• What was is like being one of few female guides back then?
• Ways to develop confidence
• AMGA president – what happened during those years
• AMGA’s DEI work
• Angela deeply cares about climate change
• Trends and changes Angela saw in the past 3.5 decades in the mountains and in the industry
• Being a guide in the US full time
• What does Angela’s work consist of now?
• Alpinist 007