Okay, I'm new here and to mountaineering in general. Im 16 years old and I just got back from a NOLS mountaineering course in the winds in wyoming and I enjoyed myself very much on the course to say the least. On the course we did a number of peaks the most significant of which was the gooseneck couloir route up gannett peak. I was wondering if you guys could help me out with what the next step would be in pursuing mountaineering and climbing in general. If it helps i live in the Los Angeles area.

Thanks for the help!

Not sure what they taught you, but I'd recommend to anyone getting into it to pick up a copy of Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills & read it cover to cover (or at least the important stuff, anyway). When I was a lad your age, transportation was the issue- if your parents trust you behind the wheel, great. Otherwise you'll have to find people for that ride. You can look here, other websites, your local climbing gym, ... Hiking & scrambling are a great way to experience the mountains & figure out if you want to invest a significant amount of time, effort, money, ... into it. There are SO many aspects to the pursuit that it sort of depends what you want out of it. Some of the more prominent subdisciplines are:

* walking/hiking (see above): if you can get a ride, you can do this on your own. You've got a pretty good array of options around you. Some good ones that I know of are Santiago Peak via Holy Jim, Baldy via Devil's Backbone, San Gorgonio, San Jacinto via Cactus to Clouds.

* rock climbing: go to a climbing gym- you should have plenty of options around LA- expensive but a good way to learn the basics. Figure out how to belay, tie a figure 8, put on a harness, ... You can learn from someone w/ experience how to set up anchors. From anchors you can toprope. From toproping, eventually leading, ...

* Snow climbing: figure out how to ski or snowshoe, put on crampons, use an axe (see Freedom of the Hills). Stay below treeline until you get some avalanche training...

* Ice climbing: Once you figure out rock & snow climbing, you can spend a lot of money & buy sharp objects that allow you to climb your way up frozen water. Cold, potentially dangerous, & expensive. Fun.

I could go on all day... Get FOTH & meet people who share your desire. The rest will come together. Have fun & be safe.

I'm 17, and I am also into climbing. I started out hiking, then scrambling. Then I started rock climbing at the gym, and eventually outside. I think that the most important thing is to find partners to climb with of similar skill level, so you both can get into the sport together and be at the same pace. That's what my buddy Thomas and I did. Also try to get a mentor to teach you "the ropes," I went climbing with Wayne Wallace for a day and it jumpstarted my rock climbing career. If you know all of the skills involved in mountaineering you'll be able to put them all together on the peaks.

I have also been reading about climbing since I was little. Read a lot of books, like Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills, and anything you can get your hands on. I also think that this article has a lot of great insight in not too many words: http://www.summitpost.org/alpinism-101-an-introduction/756518

Learn to rock climb!

Read, read, read! Learn how to set up a safe top rope anchor, how to belay, and how to rappel.

Once you know that much, you should be able to go somewhere like Stoney Point or Malibu Creek Planet of the Apes wall, and top rope without getting killed. Of course you will need a rope, harness, slings, and stuff, but you will already know what you'll need because you read about it. I am assuming you have average reading comprehension and mechanical aptitude, otherwise you should take a basic climbing class with an instructor.

Bouderdash is a climbing gym in Westlake, go there, it's way close to Thousand Oaks, and it'll be a good place for you to meet a partner.

Get some climbing guides to local spots in the area. You have tons of good climbing right in the Santa Monica mountains!

Climb safe!

It would be most useful to save some cash for another course in mountaineering.

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience often comes from bad judgement. Some actual instruction will help you get into the fast lane to good judgement and bypass some of the bad experience.

In mountaineering, bad experiences are often fatal.

I've been climbing for three times as long as you've been alive. But I've been very lucky. If I were a cat (with a mere 9 lives) I'd have been dead a long time ago. "Self-taught" is not always the best route to take.

Here is a little article I wrote with some suggestions for learinging mountaineering:
http://www.summitpost.org/alpinism-101- ... ion/756518