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Few experiences are as exciting or rewarding as an Arizona Climbing and Adventure School wilderness course. But this is adventure with purpose. Our courses are designed to bring you face to face with nature and with your own abilities. They offer you the chance to develop skills, to learn to get along outdoors, to discover firsthand the fascinating diversity of America's Western wild lands, and to find that you are capable of doing things that perhaps you never dreamed possible.

"But love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need - if only we had eyes to see."- Ed Abbey


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Green River Kayaking Renewal Adventure (Summer – 8 days / 7 nights)
Trip Rating: Moderate
This healthy, eight-day vacation of adventure, transformation and fun has long been a favorite. We combine adventures of the mind and body with adventures for the soul, to create true health from the inside out.

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Mt. Humphreys Hike & Campout (Summer – 2 days / 1 night)
Trip Rating: Challenging
Come hike and camp with hiking guru Elizabeth Suffolk and ACAS Director Mark Brontsema on a 2-day and 1-night excursion from the heat of Phoenix. Another popular trip. We will hike our way to the summit of the highest peak in Arizona - Humphrey's Peak (12,670 ft.).

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Grand Canyon Petroglyph Hike & Campout (Spring – 3 days / 2 nights)
Trip Rating: Challenging
Our most popular adventure trip!
To get to know the Grand Canyon, it's best to immerse yourself in it. Hike into it; spend a couple of days or so there; get the canyon's red dirt under your fingernails, in your eyes, on your teeth and in your veins. Lie at night beside 2-billion-year-old rock as you gaze into the eternity of the heavens.

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Superstition Wilderness Backpack Trip (Spring – 3 days / 2 nights)
Trip Rating: Challenging
Spring in Arizona's Superstition Mountains is a time of enchantment. The saguaro cactus-laden desert is vibrant with new life and wildflowers. It's a wonderful time to hike along the trails of this high Sonoran desert, discovering the variety of geological formations at the heart of the Superstition Wilderness.

Death Valley Backpack Trip (Spring – 3, 4 & 5 day trips / 2, 3 & 4 nights)
Trip Rating: Strenuous
Death Valley National Park is the largest National Park in the United States outside of Alaska. Upgraded to National Park status on October 31, 1994, by the Desert Protection act, within its boundaries are some 3.4 million acres of canyons, sand dunes, salt flats, waterfalls, hot springs, 11,000 foot mountains,strange and compelling rock formations, endless vistas, and stars at night that you can almost reach out and touch.

Grand Canyon - Elves Chasm Backpack Trip (Spring – 4 days / 3 nights)
Trip Rating: Challenging
To get to know the Grand Canyon, it's best to immerse yourself in it. Hike into it; spend a couple of days or so there; get the canyon's red dirt under your fingernails, in your eyes, on your teeth and in your veins. Lie at night beside 2-billion-year-old rock as you gaze into the eternity of the heavens. Backpacking in the canyon is a journey of body and mind, so if you're lucky you'll come out both a little more lean and a little more wise.

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Green River through Desolation Canyon (Summer - 6 days / 5 nights)
Trip Rating: Moderate
 Desolation and Grey Canyons, 84 miles of remote river canyons, are just right for five days of active kayaking. Inflatable, self-bailing kayaks are easy to paddle and comfortable to travel in. You’ll receive continuous instruction from your guides in nearby kayaks, so no prior kayaking experience is necessary. There’s over 50 rapids in this stretch of river; big rolling waves that are not technically difficult but exciting and great fun. There are great hikes to ancient Indian petroglyph panels as well as sites from cowboy legends, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

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Glacier Bay Sea Kayaking Expedition (Summer - 7 & 11 day trips / 6 & 10 nights)
Trip Rating: Challenging
Between Asia and North America, isolated by oceans and immense distances, rivaling Europe in its scale, complete with its own flora, fauna, and unique personalities, it's not difficult to think of Alaska as an eighth continent, the lost continent of North America; a world we've never known, alive with animals, mythical in its proportions and the architecture of its landscape. As the bumper stickers in Juneau say, "After you've seen Alaska, everything else looks like Texas."
Sea kayaks permit a unique intimacy with the sea. Only a kayak will take you silently slipping in and out of the numberless bays, bights, and crannies of the southeastern Alaska coast, where barnacles feed, sea otters float on their backs cracking mussels, seals sun themselves on icebergs, and whales breach between the islands. Here the architecture of the Ice Age, sprawling down from 13,000-foot summits lost in cloud and earth alike recedes to let the sea rush in where killer whales, with their six-foot dorsal fins, gather around a kayak and lead it for miles.

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Yosemite Climbing Camp
and Tuolumne Dome Climb (Summer – 6 days / 5 nights)
Trip Rating: Challenging
Only a few miles from Yosemite Valley is a different world. Just a short drive and almost a vertical mile higher in elevation, Tuolumne Meadows is an alpine rock climbing paradise. Giant golden domes, pine trees, and lakes—Tuolumne Meadows offers some of the finest scenery of any climbing area on the planet.
While Half Dome is visible from Tuolumne’s higher peaks, the climbing is completely different than Yosemite Valley. Instead of smooth polished cracks and blank faces, Tuolumne has sharp, angular cracks, endless fields of knobs, golden glacier polish with incut edges, and knobby cracks that take almost any nut at almost any point. Popular in the middle of summer when Yosemite Valley can be uncomfortably hot, Tuolumne has little traffic in early and late season, and generally little traffic off of a few popular routes. And unlike the near-urban atmosphere of Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne is blissfully void of traffic, haze, and crowds.



Our instructors are all active climbers, kayakers and backpackers.
Our staff are among the best in the Southwest.
They become full instructors after one year of rigorous training, testing and field work during which they learn ACAS's safety procedures, curriculum, process, technical standards, interpersonal/educational methods, and low impact backcountry techniques.

The majority are former instructors or graduates of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) and/or Outward Bound School! Their years of climbing and teaching have made them unequalled in safety and experience. Climbing and wilderness adventures are more than our business, it's our way of life!


Level of Difficulty
We rate each of our trips as "Easy", "Moderate", "Challenging" and "Strenuous" based on the level of physical ability and prerequisite skills required. This rating system is designed to help you decide which trip is most appropriate. Some trips may be a combination of different activity levels. In these cases we do our best to approximate the general difficulty level for the entire trip. Our trip ratings are subjective and relative to fluctuating environmental conditions as well.

easy

moderate

challenging

strenuous

description

most days involve fairly easy travel and easy activity, if required at all.

these trips combine a moderate level of activities for both "off the beaten track" and basecamp exploration

these trips are physically challenging and usually set in remote and rugged wilderness regions. challenging terrain encountered.

these trips involve strenuous activity in remote and rugged terrain and encounters with wildlife, loose footing, rough seas, extreme weather, etc.

activities and weather

day hikes, 4wd, flat-water kayaking, average weather conditions

trekking. sea kayaking, white water rafting, camping, single pitch rock climbing, moderate weather conditions

backpacking (light loads under 35 pounds), sea kayaking, multi-pitch rock climbing, cold or hot weather conditions

backpacking (heavy loads over 35 pounds), sea kayaking, multi-pitch rock climbing

experience
required

no experience required

some experience required

previous experience often recommended

previous experience strongly recommended and sometimes required

fitness
required

good

very good

excellent

excellent

activity
per day

4 - 6 hours

6 - 8 hours

6 - 10 hours

8 - 12 hours

highest altitude

5,000 feet

6,500 feet

9,000 feet

13,000 feet

Physical Fitness
Except on a few trips support vehicles, rafts or kayaks carry all our gear. We do, however, recommend that you be in good physical condition to enjoy our trips to the fullest. If you are not optimally conditioned, we recommend that you start a training program at least 3-6 months before departure, gradually increasing the intensity and duration. We further advise you to check with your doctor before undertaking any new fitness program. For our more difficult trips, we also require a doctor's certificate of good health.

"Arizona Climbing and Adventure School's outdoor trips have conditions. They require great energy, exertion, teamwork and planning. They also involve me in a process of discovery. It is impossible to hike up a canyon, traverse across a steep hill, rope up on a difficult ridge, establish a new camp, without becoming immersed in the symbolism of the adventure.

I am one person, climbing from the bottom, trying to make it to the top. I am going one step further than I have gone before. I am declaring myself, at least for one moment, free from the sometimes confining shackles of the work world. I am passing upwards, into the clouds, into the sky, into fresh clean air, into a new appreciation of my strength and the strengths of my companions.

When it is over I have not changed the world. But I bring back one small part that allows me to feel more alive, that allows me to give a little more to the ones I love, that allows me to dream new dreams. These adventures are critical, they are the adventures of my passage from the old me to the new. I don't believe that they can be had by sitting and waiting for someone else to do them.

The conditions of these passages require me to take every step. Without them I am less. With them I am more. It's that simple."




Arizona Climbing and Adventure School is a unique opportunity for individuals to experience the spirit, courage and exploration of the West. It is an initiation into the unexpected, a chance to accomplish something very exciting and to discover strengths you never knew you had. Additionally, the Arizona Climbing and Adventure School provides education in wilderness skills and working effectively with others.

It is a well known fact that a wilderness experience can effect one person so deeply that it profoundly alters his or her view of self and reality to the positive, changing a person's life for months and sometimes years after the experience.



The skills you must learn in order to safely and ecologically negotiate the terrain, climate and altitude in which our courses are offered include:

• safety skills for travel through rigorous terrain.

• how to pack a backpack.

• physical fitness



• competence with map and compass, gps, route selection, navigation.

• rope use and knot tying, bowline, water knot, square knot, clove hitch, half hitch, figure eight

• basic first aid so that every student can handle reasonable emergencies and recognizes and aid in treating illness related to altitude, hypothermia, fatigue.

• rescue preparedness

• rock climbing, backpacking, hiking, rappelling

• campcraft including minimum impact camping, ecological considerations, wilderness cooking, food selection and nutrition.

• water purification, hygiene and sanitation.

• care of equipment, ropes, clothing, packs, climbing shoes.

• environmental stewardship and Leave No Trace techniques.

• safety from storms and lightning.