My buddy Aaron (whom sent Evans with me this last weekend) fired a link off to me yesterday for the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC). Apparently they have a Denver group that offers a lot of classes and training for it’s members. This couldn’t be more prefect.
I’ve heard of CMC but never really looked into it because I’m kind of anti-club (absolutely no reason for this) and figured it wouldn’t be worth my time. Digging into their web site (a treasure trove of knowledge scattered across no less then one million pages) I find myself more intrigued. Apparently you can join a group in your region (Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs etc.) and get together with other members to go on trips or take classes. The classes themselves do not appear to be limited to hiking or skiing but they offer things like geology and botany as well.
The only downside is the $96 dollar a year price tag, or $2,130 if you want to be a lifetime member which will pay for it self after the first 22 years. On the upside they do a lot of train maintenance, helping break new trails and develop societies to help spread the word on conservation. To be honest though, that’s not what hooked me.
What they got me with is the hiker rating system, it’s like a game, a game where you can level up your a character and that character is actually you. From the looks of it I might qualify as a Class C hiker (Yes, I am that awesome) and a Moderate Backpacker. They also have rating systems for snow shoeing, skiing and rock climbing (They use the Yosemite system for rock climbing routes but it doesn’t say how they rate the climbers).
So yeah, I think I’m in. I’m not sure I could find a better resource to help me train for the CDT.