Troops 16 & 91 Leaders Advance Skills with Climbing Training

Throughout the year the Capitol Area Council’s Climbing Committee offers climbing training to Scouters. These training sessions are a fantastic way for your Troops to not only offer more advanced adventures for your youth, but in the case of COPE, also offer them unique team building experiences.

Climbing training starts with the Tower training class which teaches necessary knots, climbing and rappelling skills, safety and incident resolution solutions, and gives those attending an introduction to challenge by choice. Training is accomplished through an evening orientation class followed by a full weekend out at Lost Pines.

Once the instructors’ training weekend is over they are required to continue their training by working an event and then finally showing their skill set by leading a climbing event under the watch of a level 2 instructor or a climbing director. Other offers once you’ve completed the Tower training class are COPE & Natural Area.

COPE (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) expands the climbing and rappelling experience to include team-building games, low course elements, and leads up to high course elements. These elements help lead Scouts down the path of learning to trust one another, identifying challenges and choosing to push themselves beyond them, and working together as a team to set goals and achieve them. COPE training is accomplished very similarly to the Tower training with the orientation being done during a weekday evening, then class occurring on the following weekend.

Natural Area training also builds upon the Tower training class by teaching participants to make use of climbing gear and natural elements to build anchor points for the climbing and rappelling to be done from. This class starts with an evening orientation and then leads to 2 separate weekends where participants will practice setting up and running climbing and rappelling areas in places like Reimer’s Ranch and Enchanted Rock.

For upcoming training sessions or to learn more, see the Capitol Area Climbing Committee’s webpage: