What my clients say

A Great Program

Hi Andy,

Now we’re back I wanted to thank you again for last week. You built a great program for us and we really enjoyed it. Some of it was more “type 2” eg climbing up to the hut or cable car exit…. But the pain in the legs has gone and the memories that are left are great!!

Thanks for you patience too. I will learn that damn knot :)…..

Thanks again

Steve & Dan

Truly Memorable

Cheers for a truly memorable week !!!

Enjoy the rest of the ski season and speak soon

Spot on for the family

Just wanted to say a v personal thank you for today, mate.
Spot on for the family and although tired, big smiles.

A BIG difference

Hi Andy.

I just wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed our climbing session. It was a great moment of sharing and I learned a lot. You really are good at transmitting and explaining. Am applying the 4 advices that I memorized (feet placement, using the legs as they are much stronger than the arms, positioning the center of gravity and finding resting slots while climbing).  I can see a BIG difference.

So thank you!

Caters well for the over 70s!

Thank you very much for safely guiding us so well over the 3 days.

I hope you are putting you feet up after a gruelling few days with the geriatric alpinists! You definitely cater well for the over 70s!

I thoroughly enjoyed the climb especially the bits I was feeling anxious about – the final arête and the down climb. I never felt the expected exposure to any degree. The unexpected crevasse would have stopped me going to the top if we had made it that far alone but you calmly gave us the confidence to just get on and step across – twice!

It was the best trip we have done to the Alps over the last 7 years.

Thanks again

Good care

Thank you again for taking such good care of us both on and off the mountain.
It was quite an experience!

Best wishes Robin

Nerd Heaven

Thanks for a top day out on Friday – hope you enjoyed the rest of the weekend!
If only I’d known you were a Checklist Manifesto fan, we could have been in nerd heaven 🙂
Have a good summer
Vanessa

Relaxed Silvretta Ski Tour with Caroline Ogden

We enjoyed your company and learnt a lot during the trip.
David Stevens

It was a great week, many thanks to you and Caro.  It was really nice to have such a mixed group, with all ages – and also good to finish our season with a slightly more relaxed week.  I have returned home feeling relaxed and invigorated
Rosey Marsh

Many thanks to Caro and Andy for all your guidance and encouragement- it’s been a really memorable week.
Richard Matthews

Thanks for an awesome tour! Learnt a lot from you both. Hope to ski with you in the future.
Calum Matthews

Thank you so much for a mega week of skiing and learning all things snow ❄️ it was absolutely awesome to see the way you both worked with each other to get us all up and down in one piece!
Emily Benbow

Many thanks Andy and Caro for making it such a high quality and memorable trip.
Kevin Jackson

Great week – the passage through the Kronenjoch was one of the high points, being led so expertly in conditions I wouldn’t have dreamed of going out in (and in stark contrast to when Chris and I did it 30 years ago!) and getting some great skiing into the bargain. I felt privileged to be there.
Ted Beausire

Excellent leadership, great teamwork, real fun, fantastic snow and superb overall skiing. I’ve come away with a wonderful sense of adventure and leisure.
Steve Lilley

Thank you Andy and Caro for a great experience, with lots of support and fun and learning – including a new challenge or two. I hope I get to do some tours with you again soon!
Bill Baker

Sympathetic and Expert

Thank you for the sympathetic and expert way you handled our trip. I don’t think anyone could have coped better. A credit to the Guides’ profession! Best wishes, Mike

it was a transformative trip. A dose of mountain education and adventure. The way we cut that trail and standing at the top of Mont Forchon are moments I will never forget.
I’ve been feeling fired up ever since.

Senjasational

Thanks for a great couple of weeks. My top holiday to date. “Senjasational” summed up the whole week perfectly.

A Great Week

Thanks again for such a great week didn’t realise how much I had missed climbing!!!

Patience and Focus

Thanks very much for the great skiing and instruction this week, and the pleasure of your company. I really appreciated your patience and focus on helping me understand and start fixing my technique.

Surpassed all my expectations

Thank you again for a spectacular week. It surpassed all my expectations. We skied some great terrain, we were off the beaten track, the snow was awesome… The technique tuition was added value.

Great also to have photos so that we can relive the memories.

A huge success!

Un immense merci

Un immense merci pour ta disponibilité et ta patience.

C’était chouette!

Hungry for more!

Fantastic talk this evening by Andy Perkins on ski touring in Greenland. Thanks!
Phil Jones
Thanks Andy. Super talk. A magical playground to explore!
Alan Aldo Henderson
Great talk Andy you did well to cover all those trips in an hour !
Alan Scowcroft
Many thanks Andy. Some great photos
Andrew Fortune
Thanks Andy! Great talk, makes me hungry for more ! You had a really good audience
Anna Seale
Enjoyed your talk, Andy. Thanks for an informative hour.
Trevor Campbell Davis

Awesome Climbing Adventure

Just to say thanks and awesome! Today was the kind of adventure that made me want to try climbing in the first place! Fantastic and thanks for taking us out!

Safe, challenging and enjoyable

Great job, nice photos. Really appreciated the trip and the effort you and Kathy put in to make it safe, challenging and enjoyable. Thanks.

Richard Horlor

Thanks for the pics and info, and to you and Kathy for making it all work so smoothly, much appreciated.
Great week , great group too

Kevin Jackson

Great photos! Thank you for your help and advice. Thank you to both Kathy and yourself for making it a great week. Enjoyed the company of the group and hope to ski with you again.

Stephen Dobra

We’re safely back in a wild, windy and very soggy Devon – after a great trip in the Silvretta. Thank you both for all your organisation and amazingly patient and diligent guiding. We really enjoyed the trip in all its variety, learnt a lot from you both, maybe a little fitter now and even approaching competence at fitting and removing skins!

Thanks again – it was great to meet you both and we hope to see you again on another Eagle trip

Ric and Gill Smith

Inspiring

Thanks so much Andy! Felt like we packed loads into the 4 days – learning & skiing. Amazing to have your & Kathy’s expertise and inspiring love of the mountains.

Confidence is back

Thank you so much for the past 3 days. Confidence is back , technique will hopefully continue to improve.

Rebuilt in a day

Thanks Andy Perkins ski technique broken down and re-built in a day. Fun skiing even on the toothpicks with no visibility.

A great mountain athlete but also a very nice person

Thank you. You were there right after my shoulder injury and I will never forget how you encouraged me to see things from a different perspective. Thanks for your generosity when sharing all your mountain knowledge and experience. You are not only a great mountain athlete but also a very nice person. See you soon !

Alpine training

Thank you for the last few days Andy! I learnt a lot. The way you weigh up a situation based on risk/reward was the exact alpine training I was after. Hope to see you again in the future.

Very well run avalanche course

Thank you very much for the course last week. It was extremely useful and helped me to realise where is more safe to ski and good to learn how to use transceivers. It was also great to have a ski in a new place. It was a very well run course and I would definitely recommend it to friends.

Thanks a lot for the great weekend, I for one learnt loads about mountain safety and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Thanks for a really great few days, I learnt alot which I’m sure will help keep me and others safer in the future! Really great skiing with you and highly impressed with your level of knowledge about mountains.

Toby was very effusive about the course. He really enjoyed it and particularly the fact that it was “hands on and practical”.  He would love to come back and do some ski touring with you. (He enjoyed strapping his skis to his backpack and walking around the mountain.) The weekend just fuelled his passion for skiing and being out on the mountains.

Excellent tutor

Having switched from a snowboard to skis to take up touring, Andy put me through a fast-track four-day training plan in preparation for a trip to Greenland.

Andy’s training is delivered in a comprehensive and yet understandable fashion and my skiing improved drastically in only a few days under his guidance. I also learned more about safe mountain travel than I had in the previous 30 years.

As an added plus, he also has an uncanny ability to smell out good snow!

If you are looking to develop your own skills, whilst training in a entirely realistic environment, then I couldn’t recommend Andy highly enough. He’s an excellent tutor.

Andy was outstanding

Andy, our trip leader, was outstanding. He is clearly very knowledgable, experienced and I felt very safe with him. When a member of the team was struggling he helped them to get through the day/s and they were able to complete the trip. Andy did a great job of not letting this impact the trip too much whilst ensuring that he gave extra support where needed.

A balance of teaching and adventure

Just had a TOP week of climbing in Chamonix with Andy Perkins, it was perfect… the balance of teaching and adventure and stunning rock and scenery couldn’t have been better.

The Jedi of ski guides

An epic trip to Arctic Greenland. What a place, what an experience. Great photos from Andy Perkins, the Jedi of ski guides

Simply THE BEST!

“I can’t say enough good things about Andy Perkins. He is simply THE BEST! Totally focused on the safety and well-being of his clients, knowledgeable, experienced, professional, hard-working, personable, and multi-lingual. I would have Andy lead me again without reservation!”

Silvretta Ski Touring

Just a quick message of thanks for an excellent week. Not just the guiding, but the organisation, coaching, encouragement and attention to detail was exceptional. It was a great experience for me and has given me the confidence and experience to cope very much better with touring days in future. It looks like this will be put to the test this weekend at La Grave. I may be out in Cham in early April, but look forward to being in touch again with regard to preparation for next year’s skiing activities.

Learning the ropes

Thanks again for a fabulous day climbing at Servoz! As ever, your patience, expert coaching and enthusiasm is amazing, and much appreciated. I still can’t believe you got me to climb to the top of that cliff! I never thought I’d be able to do multi-pitch climbing, so a big thank you. I definitely feel a lot more confident in my rope work now, and can’t wait to get out in the mountains again.

See you next time!

Our trip with Andy in Chamonix and Zermatt

It’s easy to write a post about Andy’s truly vast knowledge of conditions, weather, techniques, equipment, geography, terrain, flora, fauna, logistics, history, languages, physics, psychology and human nature — and how all these things combine in the mountains. Or to rattle on about what an even tempered, patient, interesting and delightful person he is. What I was blocking on until just this moment, was how to convey his role in some challenging and transformative passages. I realized I just have to point to the first two sentences. He got us safely in and out and also intact as a family and as a team. We stretched. I took my two darlings (18 and 22 year old son and daughter) on a trip which I hoped would open new windows of view on the world, human experience and their own inner strengths and limitations. We got that plus much more with Andy’s help. He also wrestled gracefully with ridiculously complicated logistics resulting from my wanting to climb and bicycle almost simultaneously. I think the world of Andy and would feel lucky and safe with him on any adventure. I am certainly not exaggerating at all about his extraordinary knowledge. Somewhere along the line he got a PhD in engineering — which seems like a particularly good idea when one is dangling off the end of a line which he has secured. . . . Quite a guy. What an amazing experience we had with him!

We met Andy through Richard Mansfield of www.mountain-guides.net Richard also arranged a training day with the incomparable Isabelle Santoire who is also top flight, joyful and awesome. Yay for the gutsy women mountain guides! A very small and elite band.

All together our experience was beyond my imaginings. Many, many thanks to Andy for his care, intelligence and patience!

4 days in the Oberland

For anyone thinking of utilising a mountain guide – book Andy!
We have just returned from a great 4 days of mixed rock and alpine routes including the Monch and Jungfrau. Having used a number of different guides in the past I can honestly say I feel Andy is by far the best. A great combination of instruction, patience, safety and above all fun! (even if Type 2 sometimes hey Andy).
All the best for the coming ski season, and hope to see you again.

Totally agree with David. We had a superb time. Really enjoyable (and safe!). I look for mountain wisdom in a guide – someone who you know has that sixth sense that ensures things go well. It only comes from experience and that is exactly what Andy has. Great fun but safe with it.

3 days of Avalanche Awareness and powder

Thank you as always for a fantastic time over the last few days. It was great to get Harry (my godson and nephew) and his friend, Hugo, out for three days with you to get more appreciation and awareness around avalanches. It was wonderfully educational – skiing in La Thuile and Courmayeur in Avalanche category 3 and 4 put it all in practical persepctive with some very fragile snow conditions, course notes, various transceiver exercises and lots of personal examples and slides. Also, seemed a good excuse for you to get your new and very wide Vokl’s out for a trial.

We all went away with a stack load more practical information, as well as having skied some great powder amid some spectacular scenery.

Thanks as ever and look forward to seeing you in late March for some touring around the Gran Paradiso.

Back sitter

Learnt more in one day on & off piste at Argentiere with AP than all my previous lessons. Great teacher.

Les Diablerets 2014

Just had to mention the fantastic week we had in Les Diablerets really challenging conditions. but as always Andy hit the jackpot for us, always ready to change the itinerary to get the very best from the ever changing conditions. we never failed to have freshtracks everyday.
As always it is an education to ski with Any Perkins if you haven’t yet… book early to avoid disappointment.
Once again thank you for a fantastic week. see you next year buddy

Grand St. Bernard : First Ever Ski Tour

I came all the way from British Columbia, Canada. Having done ski touring and a tad taste of mountaineering in my country my sister invited me to come join this crew for a taste of the Alps. I was expecting sharing my days here with lots of people and with the lack of snow, testing my newly sharpened edges on ice. BUT this was not the case. If I had gone on my own, my initial thoughts would have been true, having Andy who knew the area and was able to sniff out terrain like a dog for a bone made me coming to Switzerland worth every penny!!

I was exposed to an amazing part of the Alps with sweet stashes of fresh snow, terrain just challenging enough to tease my skills and yet fun enough to keep a smile on my face. I had assurance knowing that every day was going to be safe and full of wonderful surprises. I NEVER would have bagged some of the peaks Andy roped (pun intended) us into doing either.

Thanks, Andy, for teaching me how to read terrain better, anticipate avalanche hazard and pick better up-tracks. I didn’t even cry myself to sleep after you took photos of me to help me with my skiing technique. The next day I applied them and what a difference!! I’ll take it home with me to perfect so I can return to show you my improvements. I had an amazing time both on and off the snow and will remember this always.

You were my first guide and you showed me there’s a reason to use one! Your experience shows and I much appreciated you sharing it with us.

“The mountains will be there next year – the trick is to make sure that you are”

Don Whillans’s quip came home to me when I got the bus back to Geneva airport and talked to a chap who had suffered a badly broken ankle on his way to the Argentiere hut on the first day of his holiday.He also had a guide and that’s where we had gone but…..
Andy has the same attitude and this is what makes him such an excellent guide. He has of course huge experience in all terrains, but it is the ability to judge the client and the conditions and get the best out of the two that makes it such a relaxing pleasure to climb with him.
He is firm (no leading or faffing around too much) and fair (you can get to the top on time) and reasonably patient with middle aged people past their prime. Over the four days we did 28 pitches and completed Cocher Cochon, Gaspard 1er and Gateau de riz. With the help of good weather, light winds and good acclimatization in comfortable huts I had a great time with Andy and would recommend him anytime.
Thanks Andy see you again!

The snow it snoweth not very much at all

Thank you Andy for knowing where to go for a great day ski touring despite the generally thin and windswept snow conditions. The area above the Great St Bernard Pass was new to me, and the ski touring well suited to my ability. This matching of objective to client and conditions is part of the reason I choose to go guided; plus the education from your communicating your decision making throughout the day (not something in my experience that all guides do); plus the technical instruction which is thoughtful and very clear (again not something all guides achieve); plus of course you brought me back in one piece. A bargain really!

I look forward to our next day together in a few days’ time …

Alps Ice Climbing 2015

Just a quick note to thank you for a fantastic few days ice climbing. Given the so-called ”poor current conditions for ice climbing in the Alps” (quote many Internet sites……….) your ability to find three great routes in terrific nick, in a new area for me, is testament to your mountain craft and knowledge of the Alps.

Have a great remainder of the season and see you in the summer !