About Us

Cloud Nine Guides provides Private Mountain Guiding, Instructional and Site Safety Supervision Services to public, industry and military clientele. We guide and educate our clients in Rock Climbing, Waterfall Ice Climbing, Backcountry Ski Touring, Alpine Climbing & Mountaineering. We provide these services both in our home ranges of Western Canada, as well as on Expeditions Abroad.

Each one of our Guides is a certified member in good standing of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. There are a variety of certification levels within the certification process. We think it's important that you as our guests know what those certification levels entail. Learn more about ACMG Guide Certification here. Read more about each of your Guide's certification levels in their bio's and when hiring a guide with any outfit, ask what type of certification level your guide has aquired.

Those who instruct our Avalanche Skills Training Courses are both active and professional members in good standing of the Canadian Avalanche Association. They are also liscensed by the Canadian Avalanche Centre to provide this training to our students. We use nationally standardized curriculm as outlined by the CAC as a baseline for our Avalanche Skills Training programs, and expand on it to provide a program that's reflective of current trends in winter backcountry recreation. Learn more at www.avalanche.ca.

Finding a Guide who works for you might require some shopping around. 

We suggest you take some time to do some browsing, and find one that fits you best. We're pretty darn good at what we do, but understand we can't be the best fit for absolutely every guest we guide, and honestly that's ok. There are a lot of very talented Guides in Canada, and we'd be happy to reccomend others if we don't fit the bill... but chances are we think the experiences and education we offer are among the best in the industry and worth coming back to us for.

We have an exceptional return rate among our guests, mainly because we put huge importance on developing strong mountain partnerships with them. Developing mutual trust and to understand your goals and motivatons when you come out with us, ultimately leads to higher quality experiences, better quality learning, and higher success rates on your guided trips. We're also personable, easy going, even keeled and value a good sense of humor which goes a long way to putting our guests at ease when the going gets tough. We work hard at being strong and capable leaders to our guests in the mountains and prefer not to flaunt the elitism of our profession.

Do some shopping around... it would be our pleasure to join you for your next trip or program, and confident we'll go toe to toe with the best of the competition out there.

We don't dig the idea of climbing, skiing or standing on peaks in big groups, and don't think you will either. One of the biggest luxuries of climbing in Canada is the space we have. To willingly give that up to line our pockets is not our cup of tea.

We see it often. Going to the mountains in large groups can open the door to breakdowns in saftey and comprimises the overall quality of your experience. On instructional style courses, larger class sizes mean you get less of your Guide's attention, leading to gaps in your learning and a lesser quality product. 

Often, our competition will run group sizes of upwards of 30+ students for their programs on both their Guiding and Instructional programs. When you're choosing a company to provide you with these services and you put value on the highest standards in safety and quality of experience, ask about their group sizes and how many people will be along side you on the program you're interested in. 

With us, group sizes will never exceed 8 people on our ski programs, or 6 on our climbing programs. That means a Safer & Better Quality Experience.

The Best In Instructional Guiding

The quality of our instructional programs is what we hang our helmets on. We approach our programs with the goal of catering to individual learning styles, and work with our guests until they're comfortable with the techniques being taught. Small groups allow us to make sure we can give you our undivided attention through the whole process. We always approach our instruction in the mountains with the idea that if our students are not getting it... we need to teach it in a different style that suits them.

Being a good Guide is much more than being strong and capable in the mountains. ACMG Certification ensures that your Guide will posess the highest in technical standards. Its does not however mean that your Guide will posess good people skills, have the ability to effectively instruct their students, or have the ability to be empathetic to their guests.

Guides who don't possess the above skill set, don't work here.

What Our Guests Have to Say About Us

The biggest reason we do what we do is because we love going to the mountains, and to share them with good people. It's meant to be challenging, to be fulfilling and to give us all a sense of accomplishment. We want our guests to have a realistic idea of what hiring us will look like - we actively encourage our past guest to post their honest and uncensored feedback about us. Follow the links below to check out some feedback from Guests we've worked with over the years.