INTRODUCTION — Joe Heeley

If you’ve got this far into my website, you will by now already know my background and how I’ve got to where I am today. What you won't know is who I really am, and my ethos to my time in the mountain, so let me get into a little bit.

As you will have seen, I suffered a fairly catastrophic injury when I was younger, which happened whilst bouldering. I didn’t fall, I was only two feet of the ground, there really ins’t an exciting story but my injury did change my life and set me down a completely different path. At the time of my injury, I was bouldering and climbing to a high level and was obsessed in the pursuit of performance. When my injury occurred it honestly took me a long time to find a way to direct my energy and passion. But what I found was that, through all of my experiences I had developed a unique mix of skills; performance movement coaching, risk assessment and management, in-depth knowledge of technical rope and anchor systems, weather and conditions analysis, and a high physical ability. These skills, when put together, allow me to share adventures with others and not only give people experiences, but actively help them work towards their own autonomy in the mountains across a variety of activities. This is now where I put energy and where I get the most joy, forming others and helping them to achieve their dreams.

Theres a french saying; un vieux guide est un bon guide. An old guide is a good guide. This resonates with me. Not because I am old, but because I want to grow old and continue to work in the mountains. The mountains are inherently dangerous and have lots of risk, both visible and hidden. I think about this every time I go into the mountains. As climber, skiers, canyoneers, mountaineers; we can be inherently goal driven. We all want to get the the summit, top the route, ski the line… but it for me these goals are never worth dying for. As I spend time with people in the mountains, i think its vital to constantly be open to change and open to discussions. If you have to turn around, retreat, climb back out, it is not a failure, but quite the contrary. I find these moments and decisions are just as formative, if not more, than when everything goes to plan. With these experiences they help you to make better decisions and have a constantly developing understanding of how to get things right, allowing you to ultimately get more goals achieved, and live a long lift whilst you’re doing it!

So there we go. I hope with this little flurry of words you will get a better understanding of who I am how I go about things and how I want to spend my time helping people (perhaps like you?) to experience the mountains in the safest way and help others to achieve their dreams.