Advanced Mountaineering Program (AMP11) - Class 2 Belay Skills

April 25th, 2015
[Pics]

After the last few weekends in the Sierra and desert I'll now be local for a few weeks helping out with the Spring Sierra Club Advanced Mountaineering Program.

For more about what AMP is see here.

This is the second of four classes and the first one held outdoors.  Topics included belaying, basic climbing skills and signals, hip belays, anchored munter belays and munter mule tieoffs, fixed lines, and telepherique.


For the rigging team the day starts early.  Jack and myself left Buena Park at 5 and met Tohru Ohnuki and Mat Kelliher on the west side of Stoney Point in Chatsworth.

AMP Gear

 Setting up Boulder 2.



At 8 am the students arrive and Dan and Pat start the class.



The first activity is teaching belaying and giving everyone a chance to climb for a few hours.


Instructors work closely with small groups of students.


After that we headed up the hillside and divided into groups to cover hip belays.


After lunch we proceed to anchored munter mule belays.


The weather was getting increasingly threatening though we only had a few sprinkles here and there.


The group came back together and half worked with Dan Richter on fixed line skills.



The other half was on the hill with Pat McKusky working on telepherique setups.


At this point we had full on light rain for minutes at a time.  I did my best to improve conditions (shaking my fist at the sky yelling "Is that all you've got!") but sadly no downpour resulted.


And that took us to the close of the day.  We'll be back to Stoney next weekend to work on rappelling skills and then the following weekend it's out to Joshua Tree to put it all together.