Dates: Saturday, May 2nd & Sunday, May 3rd

Cathedral Mountain Guides believes in blending technical skills & knowledge with strong personal climbing backgrounds and great teaching skills. As a guide service, we are proud of the way in which we can deliver a climbing education that is greater than the sum of its parts. Being climbers, being trained guides, and being a thoughtful and humble batch of instructors all comes together to create a successful, informative, and wicked fun learning environment.

This public, two-day version of our Rock Leader Course is intended to dial in the foundational trad climber skill set. This is perfect for anyone who would like to begin their trad climbing journey or is looking to dust out the cobwebs after a fair bit of time away from it all. The course will focus on leading routes in a single pitch setting.

As always, we continue to focus on the lower ratio settings so that we can continue to deliver the personalized coaching that we value so much. As such, this program is limited to just 4 participants.

Prerequisites:

• Lead climbing experience (indoors or outdoors)

• Solid TR belay skills

• Ability to comfortably climb 5.8 indoors

• At least 6 months of climbing experience

• Gear Placement

• Anchor Building

• How to protect a pitch/where & when to place protection

• Belaying from Above

• Anchor Cleaning

• Best Rappelling Practices

That might not sound like a lot, but it is! And those are the key skills right there so we want to be sure to put in the time where it matters most. With a strong foundation under you, you're really ready to launch into the world of New England trad climbing.

Time permitting, we're happy to dive into more. There's a whole world out there!

While we are happy to loan out any gear that you might need, we high recommend having as much of the following as possible. Bringing your own gear will help tremendously in creating an understanding of how to best put it to use. All kits are different. It's great to learn your own.

• Climbing Shoes

• Harness

• Helmet

• Chalk Bag

• A tube-style Belay device with dedicated locking carabiner (a guide-style device, such as an DMM Pivot or Petzl Reverso, is preferred and works best when paired with one HMS/Pear-shaped carabiner and one small, D-shaped carabiner).

• Petzl Grigri with dedicated locker (small D-shaped locker is ideal).

• 3 - 4 extra locking carabiners (2 of which should be HMS style/pear-shaped: e.g DMM Phantom HMS).

• Anchor Building Material:

  • 18 - 20' cordellette

  • 180 or 240 cm dyneema sling.

• Double length (120cm) sling

• Prussik Loop (recommended: 13.5" Sterling Hollowblock)

• 6 shoulder length slings (60 cm; with non-locking carabiners, dyneema is preferred)

• 4 - 6 quickdraws

• Single rack of cams (Black Diamond sizes .3 - #3, or equivalent), plus nuts.

  • Looking for doubles? .4 - #1 would be the best range for your starter double rack.

• 60 M Climbing Rope

• Optional:  Personal Anchor System

• Optional: Crack Gloves/Hand Jammies