Anne Parmenter — Guide Profile Interview

Hiking & Climbing Guide and Field Hockey Coach | New Hampshire, USA

You had a long career coaching field hockey before guiding became a bigger part of your life. How did those two paths connect?

In college in the UK, we followed the British Mountain Leadership Certification — which is roughly similar to the AMGA (American Mountain Guide Association) here — because if you were going to take school groups into the mountains, you needed those credentials. So I was already on a certification track from early on. It wasn't separate from my education; it was an extension of it.

Then I came to the US for grad school. I was a graduate assistant for field hockey, completely consumed by it, and I honestly didn't know any climbers. I was only supposed to stay for a year — that turned into much, much longer. Eventually, once I was settled and teaching at Connecticut College, I did the NOLS instructors program in the summer of 1990 because I wanted a US-based certification before involving students. I didn't want to just show up with a British certificate.

Around that time a local climbing gym opened, and I connected with a guy who was running a small mountain recreation guiding service in Connecticut. He could see I was already a climber, so he asked if I wanted to help teach intro sessions on Saturday mornings. That led to guiding outside, and from there it kept growing.

In my mind, coaching and guiding have always been the same thing at their core. We used to say collegiately that coaching is teaching — the classroom is just the field, the rink, the court. Guiding in climbing and mountaineering is more encompassing, because you truly have someone's life in your hands. But the heart of it — working with people, instructing, sharing a passion — felt identical to what I'd always done. When someone is climbing and you're coaching them, you're trying to help them achieve something. What level that is? Immaterial. It's the experience of the activity that matters.

Guiding is still a heavily male-dominated space, especially at the higher levels. What has navigating that actually looked like for you?

We could talk about that for days.

I've been on expeditions where I was the only woman, and some of those were genuinely hard. On Denali, I had a group of seven Swiss mountain guides — and they absolutely did not want to be clients. They didn't have permits, so they had to be, but they did not treat me well at all. You learn to grow a pretty thick skin. You surround yourself with supportive people — other guides, male guides who have your back — and you get through it.

Closer to home, I had plenty of mornings at Eastern Mountain Sports where clients would walk in expecting a young guy and get me instead. You can feel what they're thinking. My colleague Cheyenne used to say to me: just tell them what you've done before you go out. And that is completely against my nature. I don't put myself out there like that. But I took his advice in my own way. I have a business card with a photo of me sitting on the summit of Everest. If I sense a group needs to recalibrate their expectations, I'll hand it over at the start of the day. It's selective — I don't do it with everyone — but sometimes it's necessary. It shouldn't be, but it is.

What it actually comes down to, though, is knowledge and judgment. I took a group of Princeton track guys up Tuckerman's Ravine Trail in winter once — crampons, the whole thing. They took off like bats out of hell. I said: we need a pace where we're not sweating, we're not out of breath, because we're doing this all day long. They didn't listen. They crashed and burned. We never summited. That's the guide's value — it's not who walks fastest.

What do you think you bring to clients specifically because of your perspective as a female guide?

I think I'm willing to show vulnerability — to say that something is hard, or that you can't always do it, and that's okay. We've created this culture in climbing where success means getting to the top, and if you don't send, the day didn't count. A lot of what I try to do is push back against that.

At the start of a day with clients, I always ask: do you just want to go climbing, or do you want to understand what's happening? Because if you want to understand, you're going to tie your own knot. You're going to put your belay device on without me doing it. You're going to know why I'm placing gear where I am, and eventually you're going to tie the anchor yourself. That's giving someone real knowledge — and knowledge is power. Otherwise, you spend a whole beautiful day climbing and you go home with no idea what just happened to you.

I see a lot of women, in particular, whose entire climbing experience has been following a partner — usually a boyfriend who climbs harder — until the gap gets big enough that it stops being fun. When you're working with a guide who genuinely doesn't care what grade you climb, something changes. The day stops being about whether you got to the top and starts being about whether you came home with a great experience. That shift matters.

It took me time to fully understand that myself. I once watched a male guide want to put a rope on a 5.10 with a group of beginners, and I realized — he wasn't doing it for them. He was doing it for himself. A good guide, especially a seasoned one, might not even leave the ground during a group day except to demo movement. And that's completely fine, if the people you're with had a meaningful experience. That's the whole job.

What would you want someone to know if they're considering guiding for their career?

I'll be honest: it seems very sexy from the outside. But you get paid terribly. There are no benefits. No retirement. Your body takes a beating, and it's not a sustainable full-time income for most people. I've told young guides directly — you might genuinely be better off getting a job with real benefits, making real money, and using your vacation time for your own climbing trips. Because if your personal climbing feels more important to you than your clients' experience, that's information.

For me, it works because it's part-time and I'm lucky enough that it can be. I guide with Vertex Mountain Guides — Keith Moon started it after Eastern Mountain Sports was sold and their climbing school shut down. He's fully IFMGA certified and guiding in Chamonix this summer. Another one of our guides, Shan Chafee, just got fully certified as well. It's a really strong team.

The piece that drives me most right now is knowing that there's a whole population of people who have retired, have time, have the resources, and want something more than golf. They want real adventure. If I can show someone that this is something you can do well into your 60s and beyond — that the mountains aren't just for young people — that feels important. That's the work I find most meaningful at this point in my life.