Special Education Content: BCEP - An Assistant's Perspective

Photos and Article by Alex Gauthier

(The July Mazama Bulletin was a special Education Issue. This blog is part of the extended Education content. Read the full Education Issue.)

In 2013 I made a decision to do what I could to commit myself more fully to spending time in the mountains Basic Climbing Education Program was not entered into lightly. It wasn’t the money so much. BCEP’s sticker price is far below that of what a guide or most alpine schools would charge for so much information and training. No, it was definitely the time involved. BCEP has a demanding schedule which for many is enough reason to turn aside. Meeting at least two days a week for two months to get all the education in can be tough. These few excerpts are just a small taste of what the experience is like. Not everyone continues as a student of mountaineering and BCEP isn’t a proving ground so much as a tasting ground. Here’s a little taste from a BCEP volunteer’s perspective. 

Opening Night

The auditorium was nearly full as I hastened in, barely making it by 7 p.m., just like I did every single lecture night when I myself was a BCEP student. Everyone sat in teams and ours was at the front but none of them knew me, and I certainly didn’t know them.

In our breakout session, we all introduced ourselves briefly before getting started with the material. We were to go over climb preparedness. The team leaders, Richard Caldwell and Dick Bronder talked about having your gear ready, being on time, knowing the weather conditions and the million other little things that go into making a successful climb. The students listened dutifully, asking few questions. Everyone seemed a little withdrawn and awkward. We didn’t know one another yet. Time for some ice-breaking, I supposed as Dick motioned me up with my climbing pack. At his request, I had assembled about a 40lb pack. Had I ever carried a 40lb pack on a climb? I suppose I must have. I normally have camera stuff  which is heavy. Add in rope, climbing gear, clothing and the rest and I guess I carried close to 40lbs most of the time, though I never weigh my pack normally.

Dick explained that we like students to increase the weight in their pack during BCEP with each conditioning hike. I chuckled inwardly at how balky some students from my own class the year before had been at that suggestion. Before displaying the items in my pack, I offered to let each student shoulder the pack to get a feel for the weight. It definitely seemed like none had carried a heavy pack before, based on the reactions exhibited in that room.

A yard sale then ensued where I pulled out stuff and explained it’s usage and the reasoning behind it’s presence. I think it’s pretty much a given that when you start showing gear, lots of questions will come out. People obsess over gear, and why not? It’s expensive, cool, and something we each agonize over before putting it in the bag. We dashed through the remaining material for the night with the instructors hopefully leaving our students with a sense of how preparedness not only spares your team inconvenience but hopefully makes us all safer as well.

Dog

I hauled myself upright in the back of my darkened Subaru. Switching my headlamp on, I swept it’s beam over the jumble of gear jammed in around my sleeping bag. Time to get up if I wanted hot coffee. Peering through the fogged windows, I could make out Ron, one of our BCEP students starting to stir at the other end of the parking lot. Only the two of us decided to sleep at the Dog Mountain trailhead for an alpine start. Obviously, an alpine start isn’t necessary for Dog but I had been charged with leading this hike and introducing the students to the misery of alpine starts by team leader, Dick Bronder. I couldn’t wait to see how popular this would make me with the new recruits.

I strolled up to the assembled group sipping at the remainder of my java. They stood in a circle, headlamps blazing in the cool wet morning air. The mood felt decidedly sober. I cracked a joke about how much fun alpine starts are. I think possibly there might have been a courtesy chuckle from one person. Maybe. I realized getting stuck with the alpine start assignment was possibly a way for the team leaders to maintain popularity and shove us assistants squarely in the path of miserable angry students. After a few reflective moments, we shouldered packs and began to move through the damp and dark.

Horse Thief

Brigitte gritted her teeth in concentration. Her eyes filled with equal parts determination and fear. This was one of her first ever rock climbs and it wasn’t that wimpy for a newbie, in hiking boots. I judged it a modest 5.6 at most. To Brigitte that probably mattered little. I listened to a cheer squad of students and instructors on the ground spraying beta at her. I remained mostly silent. She seemed like the sort that would appreciate encouragement but little beta.

Her feet found tenuous purchase as her fat toed
hikers slipped out of cracks and refused to smear even the grippiest rock. She gained a ledge below the crux and looked with dismay before stubbornly attacking it. It wasn’t easy. She seemed a bit gripped. Over failure or falling, I was unsure. Probably both. I indicated moves that seemed reasonable and she did her best to try my tips out. As she complained of tired arms and legs, I felt her pain but realized that I’m really no stronger of a climber than the first day I tried it out. Just a better climber, than I was. Though I knew she was tired, I was also careful to point out that her fatigue was a symptom of her inexperience NOT her physical capacity.

Then she was at the anchor. I exhaled as she slapped her palms onto the ledge and clipped in safe and sound. Had I been holding my breath?  Yes.

Snow Weekend

We all mobbed the parking lot at Timberline. The day was off to a pretty stunning beginning. Low clouds hung over the valley but sun washed hopefully over the snow around us. We assistants hurriedly put on our gear, grabbed avalanche probes, shovels and bailed out of the parking lot and into the snow as the students began to mill about behind us. Hurriedly we dug a series of pits to demonstrate snow layers and teach them about avalanche conditions. Just as we finished and the students arrived with Richard and Dick, we took off again, down the gully and up the other side. We hastily began to build up some glissade paths for them to try out later on. Then we set set up some snow anchors. By afternoon, I was appreciating the instructors from the year before when I myself was a student, that much more. Lot’s of work, snow day is! We all had a good laugh testing out various “glissade diaper” designs and got some good pictures of our students learning to self-arrest. As the day wore on, the clouds rose up ominously from the valley and had enveloped the mountain as we tossed our gear back in cars. When we pointed ourselves downhill towards the Mazama Lodge, the first fat flakes of an epic snow storm began to drift down around us.

Morning greeted us with at least 16 inches of fresh and more still coming. The grey sky coughed up inch after inch of snow as we decided what to do. We had planned a trip on crampons up to Palmer but with this snow and 20mph winds, we figured it was asking a bit too much of our new students. Instead, we opted to rope up and do all our remaining skill demonstrations on the low angle terrain of Summit Ski area which had closed for the season. We were spared the wind but by the end of a several hours with feet immersed in deep snow and a lot of moving slowly and standing in one place, I wondered if I wouldn’t have preferred the cardio of the hike instead!

Graduation Day

I remembered well my own final day of BCEP. Commuting each lecture night from Sandy all the way to Jackson Middle School, I was invariably there just in time for things to kick off and on test night, I was late. Nothing is worse than be under scrutiny when you’re rushed and scattered. I had heard that nobody ever failed the BCEP exam but that didn’t ease the stress. BECP testing, I learned this time around is fairly forgiving because of the way it’s put together. I compare it to the military system of go and no-go scoring with people getting a second chance to complete a task after first botching it. The entire night, I only gave one person a second time go and at first I felt bad doing so but then I remembered a lesson I learned long ago which is that often failure is the best of teachers. The knowledge granted by failure sticks much better than knowledge granted by success. As I watched that student trundle off to her next testing station, I suddenly felt good about making her repeat the task. She owned that knowledge and she would not forget.

We packed up the rope and made our way off to our agreed upon location for our celebratory dinner and anxiously awaited our own students. As they filed in, with smiles and a new found ease about them, I felt proud of them. We’d helped make climbers out of these people. We gave them the skills they needed to launch their own climbing careers but better than that, we gave them a thirst for mountains and the confidence to drink deeply from that well.