VIRTUAL MENTORING & BUSTING GEAR: GETTING ALPINESAVVY WITH JOHN GODINO

by Ryan Reed

Beginning climbers do well to stick to the basics— simplicity and repetition are the keys to safety. But soon enough they start to see unfamiliar shortcuts and alternate methods; they hear of exceptions to rules; and they need solutions to unexpected problems. If they’re lucky, they find a good mentor; otherwise, it can take years of chance encounters and stumbling through sources to gain this kind of secondary knowledge. And even the most experienced climbers often miss the boat on new methods and gear.

In 2018, Mazama climb leader John Godino started the website AlpineSavvy as a clearinghouse for just this kind of information. Not your basic how-tobelay stuff, but the time-saving tricks, the myth-busting data, the innovative new techniques, the sage advice. With topics ranging from aid climbing to Z-systems, and a trove of resources for navigation, AlpineSavvy has something for anyone who climbs or travels in the wilderness.

John is superbly qualified for the sifting, vetting, and editing of this vast jumble of intelligence. A climber for 30 years and a Mazama climb leader for more than 20, he’s delivered countless lectures and training for basic, intermediate, and advanced Mazama classes; he actually came up with the whole idea of “skillbuilder” classes. He has a Master’s degree in geosciences/cartography, and was a U.S. Forest Service wilderness ranger and a wildland firefighter. He was instrumental in revamping the Mazama website, and is responsible for creating and maintaining the site’s libraries of GPX and KML tracks for mountain navigation.

After six years, AlpineSavvy is now loaded with 550 articles and counting, the largest collection of alpine climbing tips online, with both original content and myriad links to videos and other sources. It seemed long overdue to have John tell us a bit more about his venture. bantering and critique of comments can distract from the original post.

What was the impetus for starting AlpineSavvy?

It’s wonderful to teach people in person, and I’ve done plenty of that. But that style of learning doesn’t scale very well. I started my website and Instagram to leverage my knowledge to reach a substantially larger group of people. The web is a great medium for blog-style instruction like this. I can add photos, videos, and much more detailed written commentary than you can fit in a magazine or a book. I learn something that I think is cool, I share it, and hope a few people feel the same.

Do you have a sense of the breadth of your audience, who they are and where they climb?

What are your main sources?

Instagram is my main source.

When you see a guide or professional climber posting a nifty trick or sage opinion, is it ever difficult getting their permission to republish it on AlpineSavvy?

If somebody is posting a tip in public, as opposed to a paid online class, it’s safe to assume that they are putting it out there in the world for anyone else to use. Sometimes I will ask permission. I pride myself on giving credit, whenever I can, to whoever I learned the trick from, even if they didn’t come up with it themselves. Now that I have a relatively large following, the others realize the benefit of my sharing their tips, so there’s a fair bit of mutual benefit.

I have about 110,000 followers on Instagram and about 1,500 unique website visitors per day. I don’t dive into the web statistics too much, but there’s a rather large contingent of folks from Iran, which I find interesting.

A lot of us get our tips from climbers’ forums and social media posts, which are always followed by dozens of comments refuting, defending, or nick-picking the original post. Anyone complain about the lack of exhausting debates on your website?

I’m often a part of those discussions when I post on Instagram. On my website, I intentionally have comments turned off for the public portion of the site so I don’t get distracted. I’d much rather be writing and researching the next tip rather than being on troll patrol. My website has no advertising, no affiliate marketing, no brand sponsorships, no paid product promotion. People can learn without any of these distractions, and I generally think the continued on next page.

AlpineSavvy now has a lot of entertaining videos you’ve made with climber and slackliner Ryan Jenks at HowNOT2, where you perform “MythBusters”-style experiments pulling gear to failure with a hydraulic press. How did you get involved with Ryan?

Ryan is one of the most fascinating and energetic people I’ve ever met. We had some back-and-forth on the phone about articles I posted that he wanted to test. Then he stopped at my house for a nice rest on a road trip and we got to know each other in person. I’ve since visited him in Seattle several times with some gear breaking ideas, and those have spun off into several of his popular YouTube videos. Anyone interested in climbing would benefit from following his YouTube and Instagram. He recently started an online gear store that I think will be one of the biggest in the U.S., which will help support his gear testing.

What have been the most popular posts (both topic and type of post)?

Anchors! And any Instagramer that has a skull and crossbones, that gets people’s attention. On the other hand, navigation and trip planning are my personal passions, and I always wish more people were interested, but those posts never do as well.

Have you had to choose between alternative or competing methods when deciding which gets the “thumbs up AlpineSavvy seal of approval”?

I have to do that all the time. The techniques that I choose to post are based on my personal experience, but I try to stay as current as I can on generally accepted best practices. As you get more experience in climbing, you realize that almost everything we do is subjective, and there’s a wide range of acceptable ways to do things.

With your earliest articles now six years old, have you had to take down or edit any of them due to new information or better methods that have come up since then?

I go back and edit and improve my articles all the time, even some of the quite old ones. I have deleted a few that no longer show best practices, but in general, I try to upgrade where I can. It’s important to maintain the older “evergreen” articles that are still relevant and searchable by Google because the material is still important.

Do you ever get a sense of local variations in methods across the US, or the world?

Yes, that’s one of the fascinating things! For example, Americans can be pretty relaxed about using non-locking carabiners for a multi-pitch anchor, whereas in Europe it’s generally taught that you need to use lockers everywhere. Many Europeans are fine with using a single stout bolt as an anchor, whereas that would never happen in the U.S. British climbers love to build complicated anchors using the climbing rope, Americans reach for the cordelette.

You have endorsements from several well-known climbers, including Will Gadd, who says: “If AlpineSavvy existed when I started climbing, I would have had exactly 73 percent fewer epics, lost 94 percent less gear, and almost died 99 percent less.” Any thoughts on his math?

Will is a product of the Canadian school system, so I’m sure his math skills are better than mine.

AlpineSavvy now showcases some beautiful mountain photography by John Scurlock, Doug Wilson, Derek Fias, Vaqas Malik, Andrew Holman and Angela Bohlke. How did that come about?

I am a lousy photographer, but fortunately, I have some Mazama friends who are excellent. When I started the website I asked a few of them to let me showcase a dozen of their photos, giving them credit of course. I think it’s a nice little aesthetic corner of my website, where folks can take a breather from all of the tech tips.

Any other areas you’re thinking of expanding into?

Something I want to add onto my premium membership is a series of selfrescue instructional videos filmed with a professional guide who literally just wrote the book on the topic. There don’t seem to be any such videos currently on the web, and self-rescue is especially well-suited to video instruction because some of the techniques are fairly complicated. I’m looking to add that in autumn of this year, so that will be a significant benefit for members.

You now have Premium memberships, but most of the content is still publicly available. How does Premium work, and what do Premium subscribers get?

For various reasons in 2024, I decided to start making some money off of my website rather than running it as a hobby project, and that has been a big change for this year. For a very modest monthly cost, which is currently just $9, premium members get access to three main things: the complete long-form version of every new article published after January 2024, entry into some sweet monthly gear giveaways and monthly discount codes, and access to discounts from more than 20 cool companies that offer products climbers love, like publications, sports nutrition, niche gear companies, and online guiding and instruction.

I also believe that information like this that could potentially save your life be freely available to the largest number of people possible. That’s why I keep a useful yet shorter version of all new articles available for free on the public portion of my website.

Do you still manage to get out and climb, or is writing about climbing taking up all your time?

I still get out and climb a bit, but I have lots of demands from my family so that keeps me fairly close to home. I am moving to Bend in November 2024, so I will be a lot closer to Smith and the Sisters, so I’m sure I’ll be getting out a lot more.