Colorado Mountain School

CMS is the premier guiding operation for climbs and alpine mountaineering in and around RMNP and Estes Park. My Dad and I have been going to CMS for nearly 20 years and have worked with several guides. Most recently we’ve worked with Bob, Russell and Ian; all very skilled and fun to work with. We normally spend 3 full days out, doing a combination of multi pitch climbing and alpine ascents/​mountaineering. Most recently we did multi pitch on Lumpy, a snow skills day high up in RMNP, and Dreamweaver route up Mount Meeker. Safety is the number one priority of CMS and their guides are extremely trust worthy and capable. The current owner of CMS is an awesome dude and their guides and staff are top notch. Also, they have great, cheap and comfortable facilities to bunk in if you are looking for someplace simple and efficient to stay while you are climbing in the area!

I recently took my SPI course with Colorado Mountain School based in Boulder/​Estes Park, CO. I felt the instruction and course curriculum was top notch and I would recommend their programming to other aspirational guides and outdoor educators.

I participated in the Intro to Rock Climbing course this summer with Colorado Mountain School and it was an amazing experience! My mountain guide was Mike Soucy and he really made the experience a perfect one. He was very thorough in his teaching, reassured me when I got nervous while climbing, connected well with the group, and had a great sense of humor. I plan on taking the intermediate rock climbing course in the future and will definitely plan to take it with Mike as the mountain guide.

We hired Brent Butler for 10 days of climbing around Boulder and were very happy. He was very professional, personable, and an all around great climbing guide. Brent was able to handle a wide variety climbers from beginner to highly experienced. We plan to hire him on the next trip.

Did my AIARE Level 1 course here as well. Stayed for 3 nights.
Speaking of the hostel, it’s very clean, functional. Has a great vibe — useful for someone about to do something bad a** and ill advised in the mountains, or for that classroom dork. Speaking as a world traveler, this is one of the better hostels I’ve stayed in. ;)
If you’re passing through, especially on a mtn adventure, definitely stop here. Who knows who you’ll run into!

Did my AIARE Level 1 course here. Stayed at their comfy lodge for 4 nights and had a blast out in the field. All the instructors had a good vibe and enjoyed their work.
Sign up for the course was easy, and the phone staff was helpful.

I highly recommend the Powder Chasers guided trips. Our guide, Mike, made sure we were safe while we skinned through RMNP (
) to take insane runs in chest-​deep powder. Definitely a great way to get in a reasonably priced, incredibly high quality guided backcountry day.

Excellent guide service, and Joey «Magic Man» Thompson is a wonderful, solid and fun guide. He showed us a great couple of days at Lumpy Ridge and adapted the days to our considerably different skill levels. booking & follow up was prompt, professional and thorough and the guiding was smooth start to finish. Total pros.

Took the AIARE Level 1 course and thought they did a great job. Lodging at the school /​hostel for muli-​day classes is totally worth it (just right upstairs!) and the community of people is fun and outdoorsy. You can see that the instructors are passionate about what they teach and want to engage the students. Advice for taking the Avalanche Level 1 course would be to get an AT ski setup (if you know how to ski) rather than the snowshoes, since I think you see more on your tour day. Also, the «Write in the Rain» weatherproof notebooks that they sell are more expensive than what you can get elsewhere, but they are specifically tailored to the course and seemed to be way more informative than others I have seen.

I stayed at CMS and climbed with them for a week via a program called First Descents, which is an outdoor adventure camp for young adult cancer survivors. The guides and staff were FREAKIN AWESOME! I would climb with them again any day. In fact, I’m wearing my CMS t-​shirt right now. :)

Normally, it’s difficult to give a review of a mountaineering business as a whole since when using them, you’re only really dealing with one person… your guide. But since CMS was so accommodating and flexible with my schedule, I feel confident in giving them the four stars that I feel they’d most definitely earned.
My friend and I flew into Boulder, CO for the annual «MuddyBuddy» adventure race and were staying with some of his family members near Estes Park. Since we’re both climbers, we thought we’d take advantage of the locale and hire a guide to bring us to some challenging and visually exciting ascents. We didn’t have much time, given our tight schedule, but they seemed to really appreciate our business and selected a guide for us who was willing to give up his plans for the day and spend it with two city slickers from Chicago. A young guy in his early twenties, Paul (our guide) was very competent in instruction and was actually pretty funny, too! All the runs we took that day were pretty tough, but the rewards when reaching the summit were out of this world.
Climbing in the Colorado Rockies is a must for any enthusiast, and if you happen to find yourself in Estes Park while doing so, give CMS a call. If you need a little (or even a lot of) instruction, they’re reasonably priced and very knowledgeable in the RIGHT way traverse those crags!
Oh, and our guide, Paul? Turns out he was originally from Naperville. Small world.

When you get to the end of your life and no longer associate the word « Unilocal» with anything but an unhappy noise that your dog makes, you’ll have more time to try to remember what the hell you did. You’ll try to ignore all those times your brother dared you to put something inappropriate in a bodily opening, and focus instead on the things that made you feel alive, or gave you some perspective on what living might mean.
Here’s one: you climbed a mountain. (Did you? Can you remember?)
Well, if you did and you survived, you probably hired a guide. The Colorado Mountain School is a group of well-​trained, sturdy mountain guides.
A few caveats: I have only hired these guides once, so have met exactly two of their guides; we hired them to guide us climbing, not skiing or hiking; and I have hired guides only twice in my life: once in Squamish, B.C., and once in Colorado. (Plus, the first time I did it – in Squamish — I had so little experience that I couldn’t tell you what my guide did. He could have flapped his wings to get up seven pitches, or protected himself with bits of paper stuffed in the crack for all I knew. So long as he belayed me, I was oblivious.)
My inexperience with guides aside, when my partners and I told the heavies we know that we wanted to go to Colorado, they all said the same thing: hire CMS. And I can see why. These guys are cautious but willing to educate and challenge their students. They are also fun, patient and have exclusive rights to guide at what I think is the most beautiful place I have been outside of Switzerland: Lumpy Ridge. When I look at my photographs from that trip I. well, I’m filled with longing. I wonder if I’ll ever do anything that amazing again. (And I climb at the Red River Gorge all the time, so I’m not just an easily impressed gym rat.)
These guides have been taught to be suspicious of what their guests say (or think!) they can do, so they started us on a route that was gorgeous, multiple-​pitch and fairly easy. Once we proved ourselves to them a bit, they added to the challenge and before the day was up, we were on the steepest most featureless slab I have ever seen. (That’s where I stopped impressing anyone.)
I could fill this page with descriptions of the views and the routes, but by way of a summary I’ll just give some advice: if you have any interest at all, go and learn from them! Be honest about what you can do; be ready for any weather; and don’t think you won’t have to carry or coil any ropes. And think of me: I’ll be jealous!