Our Story

In 2019 Climb’s founders and senior instructors, Chris and Nicky, began running a weekly indoor climbing session for the Youth Commission for Guernsey & Alderney, to utilise their climbing experience and qualifications.

On 14 August 2020, post-COVID lockdown number one, and with the encouragement of the Youth Commission, Chris and Nicky founded Climb as a Guensey charity. Additional young people joined the Saturday morning climbing group and volunteered as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award to help run a new group on a Wednesday evening. With the young volunteers we were able to provide high levels of assistance and support more new climbers. It formed our model for the future - developing our own climbers to help run sessions - a virtuous circle.

2021 saw Climb become a quality approved partner of Bailiwick Social Prescribing, and begin working with our first adult referrals. We became Guernsey’s first dedicated rock climbing provider and commenced running outdoor sessions for adults and young people. In September we added to our existing indoor sessions with an additional Saturday session for young people, a new indoor session for adults, a weekly outdoor climbing session and a weekly walking group.

2022 was a busy year! With funding from the John Ramplin Trust and the Social Investment Fund things really took off! As well as the three weekly sessions for young people, an additional juniors session was launched, another adult session started and climbing for Les Voies School was provided every day of the week. Check out what the Les Voies students got up to in this cool video -  https://www.facebook.com/GuernseyPress/videos/586186532785113 .We became the first Mountain Training provider in Guernsey and began running Rock Skills Introduction and Rock Skills Intermediate courses. In the summer, 5 of our climbers gained their Indoor Climbing Assistant qualification, and 9 of our volunteers completed their Climbing-for-All training. We also supported one of our visually impaired adult climbers to gain second place in Round 3 of the National Para-Climbing Championships!

In 2023 Chris and Nicky headed over to the Peak District to establish operations in the UK. Climb became a Mountain Training Hill Skills provider and started running Learn-to-Lead courses. Sessions continued in Guernsey run by an amazing team of 4 instructors and 7 assistants.

What will 2024 bring?!