The Best Denver Mountain Guides
Are you looking for the best Mountian Guides in Denver? Look no further! Golden Mountain Guides is the premier Colorado Front Range guiding service, offering a wide variety of personalized trips, climbing courses, skills clinics, and awesome adventures. Our team of passionate, AMGA guides foster conservation, outdoor education, and environmental stewardship by creating transformative mountain adventures that inspire. All through climbing!
Golden Mountain Guide's mission is to share the joy of climbing with you through mentorship and personalized instruction, empowering your development in climbing and life.
What We Offer
Whether you are a seasoned mountain athlete, aspiring alpinist, or brand new climber, Golden Mountain Guides has a wide variety of courses, clinics, and personal trips available to suit your needs. Smiles guaranteed!
One of our exciting offerings for 2022 is the Golden Trio: a unique opportunity to develop your outdoor climbing skills starting with Gym to Crag, progressing to Learn to Lead, and tying it all together with Self Rescue Skills. Connection to the outdoors and adventure in wild places is deeply rewarding, and we can help you develop the skills you'll need to get after it!
Want to explore outside of the Front Range? Golden Mountain Guides operates in some pretty cool places like Moab Utah, Rocky Mountain National Park, Staunton State Park, Devil's Tower WY, and Spain! We hope to continue expanding where we guide so we can share the places we cherish with you. Drop us a line and let us know where you want to climb next.
Our Favorite Climbing Areas Near Denver
Believe it or not, inspiring, world-class climbing is available in close proximity to Denver. Whether you are visiting Golden, Boulder, or Denver, we would love to share our favorite climbing spots with you. Got all day? Half a day? 10 days? Awesome, let's make the most of your time in the mountains!
Clear Creek Canyon
Just minutes from the center of Golden and less than 20 minutes from Denver is Colorado's Clear Creek Canyon. Home to more than 1200 sport, trad, ice climbs, and boulders, this canyon is a climber's paradise. Clear Creek has it all - from relaxed single-pitch slab climbs to thrilling multi-pitch adventures like Playin' Hooky. Due to the unique position and fantastic weather of Clear Creek Canyon, there is potential to climb ice and rock on the same day for the die-hard rock warrior. Access, while complicated by construction at times, is straightforward for the most part. The gneiss, schist, and granite offer an outstanding variety of terrain to explore. Clear Creek is home to some awesome ice climbing, so if you're wanting to dodge i-70 ski traffic and swing some tools around, check out Ice Climbing in Denver.
North Table Mountain
Due to North Table's southern-facing aspect, this local Golden area crag stays warm and climbable all year round. Even after heavy snow, North Table is often dry in as few as 48 hours. This makes for a great escape from the cold during the winter! Climbing here is single pitch, and has a good mix of trad and sport routes. Because of the easy top-down access, North Table is a great way to work on learning new skills in one of our Rock Climbing Courses or taking an AMGA Single Pitch Instructor (SPI) Course. Access here is super convenient, and you can really get in a ton of pitches here in a day. A great spot for the pre/post work climbing session!
Boulder Flatirons
As you drive Route 36 from Denver to Boulder, it's impossible to miss these striking sandstone formations. Flatiron climbing is just pure fun. The seas of well-textured and uniquely featured sandstone continue almost endlessly, and some of our favorite formations- like the first flatiron - provide close to 1200 feet of vertical gain. But don't worry, the climbing is generally mellow and intuitive. These grill-like Flatirons (see, Flat-Iron) pitch out of Boulder at a 50-60 degree angle, a scrambler's dream. The Boulder County Open Space trail system is well developed and the steep approach will get your blood pumping. Summit views, exposure, wildlife, they're all parts of a normal Flatiron climb. Due to the wandering nature of the routes, you could climb the same pitch 100 times and find a different way to do it every time. This is what excites us about climbing here and why we absolutely love it. If you're looking for a thrilling rappel to cap off your epic climb, join us to climb The Maiden!
Professional Colorado Mountain Guides
Golden Mountain Guides strives to create one-of-a-kind experiences. We're a group of passionate outdoor enthusiasts who have collected years of personal and professional climbing experience. Our guides undergo rigorous training through the American Mountain Guides Association, earning certifications as Single Pitch Instructors and Rock Guides. Our team members are certified in Wilderness Medicine or as Wilderness First Responders, possessing the risk management skills to ensure you have an awesome day on the mountain. Any guides joining the GMG team have undergone extensive training from the AMGA, and become experts in the vertical realm. Rock Nerds? No, not at all... okay maybe a little bit.
As a family-run business, we pride ourselves on creating meaningful connections with our climbing partners as mentors, educators, and friends. What sets us apart is our commitment to helping you develop the skills you need to feel confident in the mountains. We are stewards for the environment and places we climb in, we want to share that with you through experiences you will remember for a lifetime. Climbing peaks is more than physical, after all.
Guide Spotlight
Thomas Gilmore Ben Coryell Daniel Delany
Each of our guides has a story to tell, and they are all eager to share skills they have learned along their journey with you. Want to learn more about our awesome team of guides? Check them out here.