Special Education Content: BCEP - The Instructor View

BCEP Notes From the Field: Team 12 

Leader:  Amy Mendenhall (co-leading with Lynne Pedersen)

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

Pre-BCEP (Basic Climbing Education Program) Team 12 Leaders & Assistants Meeting:  My living room is standing room only, overfilled with smiling people who want to help our team this year. It blows me away that every year we manage to find such wonderful volunteers to give up 6 weekends of their life to help BCEP students learn how to climb. Super grateful.

Photo: Alex Gauthier

First Night of Class:  Get to meet our students tonight and find out how we can help them reach their goals. This is where I’ve met a lot of my future climbing friends.  Most of my closest climbing buddies were students & assistants I met via BCEP classes over the years.  Tonight we start expanding that circle even wider.

First Hike:  We hiked Hamilton Mountain in the gorge. Weather was great.  I got to lead the super sneaky snack team, which left an hour before our students and the rest of our group. We surprised our students on the summit with a fabulous spread, table included, with breakfast treats, coffee, juice and more.  Super fun start to the conditioning hikes.

Photo: Alex Gauthier

Rock Session at the MMC:  My favorite, and most exhausting, night every year in BCEP.  We  take a group of people who still have the price tags hanging on their brand new harnesses and carabiners and webbing ... and turn them into climbers in one night. They transform from someone learning how to put on a harness to belayers, climbers and rappellers in only a few hours. There’s a bit of a swagger when they leave. It’s a life-changing moment for some of them, and they don’t even realize it yet.

Horsethief Butte outdoor rock session:  Everything clicked this weekend. All of our students tackled the routes without ever using the word "no."  When we’d ask, "Why don’t you try this rappel?," every answer was, "Ok."  I’m so proud.  They’re working through fear, really becoming skilled at climbing and their belay technique is solid. I had a moment alone with a few students, all of us staring at Mt. Hood, and they both said they "couldn’t believe they were doing this."  They never thought they’d be climbing on rock outside.  One of them said his new goal was to summit Hood. Now I’m excited about climbing all over again. 

Photo: Alex Gauthier

Snow Session:  Windy and cold start to the day, and zero complaining from our team. As the day progressed, our students learned to self arrest, they roped up and jumped fake crevasses and belayed each other up slopes. It’s a day of playing with sharp objects (ice axe, crampons), and everyone was super safe. Now they know how to climb rock and snow – can’t wait to lead them up some peaks this summer!

Post-BCEP:  Students on summits everywhere! Our students, so far, have made it up Unicorn Peak, Mt. Hood and Mount St. Helens (in dresses on Mother’s Day).  I personally got to lead two of our students to the top of Mt. Hood, which has to be one of the best experiences in climbing that I can have. So satisfying to help expand someone’s idea of what’s possible.