A climber from Garibaldi is one of only three in Canada to achieve Mountain Guide certification from the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) this fall.
As if simply completing the training and examinations weren't remarkable enough, Jia Condon did so without a single failure and within just three years. According to ACMG president Scott Davis, aspiring guides usually need about six years.
"He's what we call a golden child because he actually passed all of his exams on his first attempt, and that's fairly uncommon."
The certification is recognized by the International Federation of Mountain Guides Association and allows Condon to guide around the world. With the addition of the three new guides, there are still only 126 ACMG Mountain Guides in Canada.
Condon, 39, said he wanted to fast-track because he started the program late in his career. Nevertheless, he has already climbed all over the world, including Antarctica, China, and Baffin Island.
But his most memorable expedition was a 14-week sea voyage from Newfoundland to Greenland aboard a 54-foot steel ketch called Northanger where he met his wife, local family physician Angela Rivers.
"We fell in love crossing the North Atlantic," said Condon.
He also got the chance to make quite an impression. In the middle of the crossing, a fishing net got stuck on the boat's propeller. Condon dove underneath the boat in a dry suit to free the propeller.
The ability to be wisely proactive when confronted by obstacles is fundamental to being a good mountain guide. Condon said the ACMG alpine and ski field examinations were both mentally challenging. However, the alpine examinations were physically the toughest because he was required to do six 5,000-foot ascents over a 10-day period. With 13 hours in the field, plus organizing and repacking, Condon was putting 18-hour days to the test.
"Over that time we may have done as much as 30,000 vertical feet of gain. That's hard on anyone's knees."
Condon, who grew up in Whistler, said he is more experienced with ski guiding. After all, he owes his climbing career to descending. "Climbing is an extension of skiing, that was my first passion in the mountains," he said. "In the spring, when the skiing ended my ski partner at the time, Rich Prohaska, was into climbing. We were ski mountaineering before we even knew what ski mountaineering was, and then it was just an evolution into the climbing."
Perhaps no one knows Condon as a climber better than fellow ACMG Mountain Guide Prohaska, who has been Condon's climbing partner since 1989. They have faced numerous challenges together all over the world.
"We're both ambitious but also fairly patient, which is a hard combination but very important," said Prohaska.
They have many mountaineering achievements under their belts. But Prohaska said that they avoid risks that some other climbers thrive on.
"We both are quite conservative in all the things we've done. Jia's backed off of several things just because he didn't feel good about it, which is a good instinct to have."
That instinct is especially important now that Condon is father to an 11-month-old daughter, Ella. His family spends half the year in Squamish and the other half in Bella Coola, where Condon works at a heli-ski operation during the winter.
Condon plans on doing private guiding and ski-touring while getting involved with the Canada West Mountain School in the future. And although the exams are done, Condon said the learning now begins anew.For more information go to www.jiacondon.com.
