Climbing Committee Positions and Projects 

MMC Rope/Equipment Room Team:

We always need more help with the rope room.  The Climbing Committee would like to see a team formed to spearhead management of the rope room.  Members do not need to be CC members.  Here are some draft plans, that outline many of the tasks involved, as they would ideally be organized.  But they have not moved forward for several years.  

Draft Equipment Room Management Team Roles and Responsibilities

Draft Equipment Room Operations Manual

Climb Leader Newsletter:

(Climbing Committee Position)

Climbing Committee is in need of someone to manage some of our communication, one who can mainly write the short ~1-page newsletter on a bimonthly or quarterly basis, giving Climb Leaders and Leadership Development participants the updated news they need. Regular communication is important, and we could use some help with this!

Contact: John Sterbis <climbing@mazamas.org>

Qualifications: writing and communication skills.

Scope: Bimonthly or quarterly newsletter. You would agree to serve on Climbing Committee, attend our regular monthly meetings, participate in discussions and voting.

Debrief Team Member: (multiple volunteers)

(Not a Climbing Committee position)

Climbing Committee has organized a new component to its committee as a service to the leadership community. The purpose of the Debrief Team is to create a safe space and learning environment where thoughtful, open-minded people who have critical-thinking skills work through the activity's events, and try to collectively learn from the experience. We’re looking for volunteers to join the Debrief Team who have a background in outdoor education, group management, experience giving feedback, and/or experience with organizing and leading groups of people in the outdoors. Debrief Team volunteers need to be able to leave their egos at the door, when reviewing events, and need to be able to both give and receive feedback. Volunteers do not need to be Climb Leaders or in the LD Program. A single debrief is a 2-4 week long process of about 20 hours of volunteering (reading documents, meeting, discussing, etc).

Contact person: Terry Brenneman <debrief.climb@mazamas.org>

Qualifications: background in outdoor education, group management, experience giving feedback, and/or experience with organizing and leading groups of people in the outdoors

Scope: A year commitment to the Debrief Team, where you’d intend to participate in 1-2 debriefs or more if you’re interested.

Leader Manual Update Project:

(Optional Climbing Committee Membership)

With a number of big changes around the Mazamas, including the introduction of the new Mazama.org website, changes and updates to the Climbing Committee and Mazama policies, and updates on the logistics of operating a climb (eg new Permits), some of our manuals have become woefully out of date. We need someone who enjoys gathering information, digging around to find the intended purpose of our policies and guidelines, and can write and edit semi-technical documents, to head up getting the Climb Leader Manual and the Leadership Development Manual up-to-date and relevant.

Contact: Leora Gregory <leadershipdevelopment@mazamas.org>

Qualifications: basic research skills, technical writing, and editing skills

Scope: 2-3 casual months to read and review the current documents and curate the relevant changes, and 4-5 weeks for updating the manuals to be a current version. You do not need to serve on Climbing Committee, but it’s a potential option.

Climbing Committee Website Development Project: (multiple volunteers)

(Optional Climbing Committee Membership)

We are in need of a communication portal so Leaders can find the documents and resources they need-- a Climbing Committee Homepage. We’re looking for a volunteer with some basic technical skills, familiarity with G Suite applications (drive, docs, spreadsheets, etc), and web development skills, to help us create a Google site that would host all the Climb Leader documents, policies, forms, committee and Leader roster, and such. It would be a one-stop-shop for all the details that you normally rummage around the old emails, or documents laying around. We’d like some volunteer(s) to help create and develop a useful, clean, and simple website where Climb Leaders and Leadership Development participants can easily access the resources they need.

7/2024: Glenn Widener has volunteered!  As the site comes together, he could use help curating content. glennwidener@gmail.com

Climbing Route Database Update Project: (multiple volunteers)

(Not a Climbing Committee position)

The route database for Mazama climbs needs some improvement, and is using an oversimplified metric of communicating grade/challenge/commitment: Mazama Grade (A-E). Climbing Committee needs to update the route database to augment the climbing route descriptions and history (both climbing history and land/tribes history), climb commitment level, and terrain descriptors (e.g. Grade II, 2-pitch low 5th, moderate snow, some 4th class). We’d start this project with an audit of the database itself, see what’s there and what work needs to be done, and come up with a plan for what and how needs to be done. This may become a crowd-sourcing project, to leverage the large pool of knowledge in all our Leaders, but we need someone to take ownership over this project. Do you like researching routes? Do you like preparing beta/trip-reports for others? Do you like working with maps to see what they tell you? This may be the wonky project for you.

Contact: John Sterbis <climbing@mazamas.org>

Qualifications: route research skills, command of climbing/terrain language and jargon, strong spreadsheet and/or database skills

Scope: Ongoing, but first-pass assessment of the database would take 1-2 casual months, then 1-2 months for planning/strategizing of the review process, 3-4 months of working through the actual database of climbs.

Forthcoming Recruitment:

• Training Manager (mainly coordination and scheduling)

• Leader Updates programming

• Awards and Recognition

• Crevasse Rescue and Avalanche instructors