With 25 years of guiding experience, Angela is one of the most experienced and active women in the profession. Growing up in a small mountain town in beautiful West Virginia Angela lives by the states motto, “Mountaineers are Always Free”. Her passion for climbing, mountains and mountain culture fuels a wanderlust that takes her to remote corners of the world in search of adventure. Her endeavors most often include an element of service work and doing good things.

Angela is one of only 7 women in the U.S. to become an IFMGA Mountain Guide, an internationally recognized certification of which less than 50 women world-wide have achieved. The process involves over 100 days of guide training and rigorous exams in three disciplines, Alpine, Rock and Ski Mountaineering through the American Mountain Guides Association. She completed her Rock Guide exam in 2005 and her Alpine Guide exam in 2008. In 2010, she passed her Ski Mountaineering exam and became the 6th women in the U.S. to become an IFMGA Mountain Guide.

Angela has worked for some of the country’s most respected organizations; Exum Mountain Guides, Mountain Madness, the American Alpine Institute, Prescott College’s Adventure Education Program and Outward Bound amongst others. An advocate for women’s programs, she has guided for Chicks with Picks for 9 years, Women that Rock, Chicks on Cracks and Women’s Clinics at numerous events for sponsors. Angela was the first woman to work for the AMGA as an instructor and examiner, training aspiring guides and continues to do so.

She’s led 20+ high altitude expeditions, including 5 on Denali, and her endeavors have taken her form ski traverses of Lapland in Scandinavia to the second highest point on earth, the South Summit of Mt. Everest, at 28,875ft. She has climbed throughout Nepal, Pakistan, India, Patagonia, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Canada, Alaska, and extensively in the U.S.

A specialist at wedding service with adventure, Angela earned a Master of Arts degree in 2001, for her work in International Mountain Conservation. With her leadership as part of an Everest expedition in 1998, she helped friend and colleague Tom Whittaker make the First Disabled Ascent, and organized her Sherpa team to carry out a major clean-up high on the mountain, removing over 1000 kilos of garbage and over 100 discarded oxygen cylinders. Also as part of that expedition, she organized and facilitated an 18-credit semester course for a small group of Prescott College students who carried out various service projects in the Khumbu Valley for over two months. In 2001, she put together another successful clean-up expedition on Aconcagua that removed over 2000 kilos of trash from above 21,000ft.

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Images courtesy of Ace Kvale.