The Sierra Club Advanced Mountaineering Program or AMP was started in 2009 by Dan Richter and Pat McKusky to teach basic and advanced mountaineering skills with the goal of promoting safe climbing and train a new generation of club leadership. While it's primarily targeted to Wilderness Travel Course graduates and Sierra Club outings leaders anyone is welcome. It's run twice a year in the spring and fall and staffed by an array of hard working volunteers many of whom are also WTC instructors and group leaders.

This was the Fall 2017 AMP class which is timed so that the Joshua Tree weekend happens at the same time the Wilderness Travel Course has it's graduation out there.  We also moved the Wednesday night class to a slightly more central location in Fullerton for the first time after historically having it on the north end of LA and we generally lucked out on weather.

The following covers the 4 official class outings plus the Rock Checkoff weekend which many AMP students attend to have what they learned during the course assessed.

What: WTC Joshua Tree Rock Scrambling & Navigation
When: February 9th & 10th, 2013
Where: Indian Cove Campground, Joshua Tree
Instructors: Matthew Hengst, James Montross, Laurent Hoffman, Paul Warren, Jeff Atijera, Wendy Miller
Pictures: Matt's Flickr

January through April is the season where myself and many other regulars on my peakbagging trips wander in from the wilderness, start showering regularly again, and act as volunteer instructors for the Sierra Club Wilderness Travel Course.