NSAC Alpine courses

Always wanted to learn how to climb the highest mountains, how to cross glaciers and plan your own tours but don't know where to start? The NSAC offers amazing courses, for beginners and more experienced climbers. For relatively good prices you will get an amazing course, together with other SACcers (student alpine club members), given by an official NKBV Alpine Instructor or a mountain guide.

But where to begin?
On the 19th of January, the Alpcie gave a presentation about the NSAC Summer program. You can find the PowerPoint presentation here. To inform yourself further, you can find more information on https://nsac.alpenclub.nl/zp (Dutch only unfortunately, you can ask the board or Alpcie if you do not understand). 

Hope to see you there!

C1

Is it your ambition to become an expert in alpine climbing, but have no experience yet? This course will be the starting point for you! In an intensive approach, all basic alpine skills are discussed doing exercises and tours. Firstly, you will get familiar with various hiking/climbing techniques in both rock, snow and ice terrain. Secondly, you’ll learn rope techniques, orientation and other alpine skills, such as weather administration and danger recognition. The course is designed to give you a solid foundation to make simple tours on your own.

C2

Is it your ambition to become an expert in alpine climbing, but only have little experience? This course will be perfect for you! In an intensive approach, all alpine skills are discussed doing exercises and tours. You will extend your knowledge of icy, rocky and snowy terrains and rope techniques from the C1 course and learn to become a natural at orientation, weather administration and tour planning in the alps. The course is designed to enable you to operate on your own in the alps in simple and slightly more difficult tours.  

C3

Would you like to traverse the steepest ridges, cross the iciest glaciers and venture the most challenging peaks of the alps? Then the C3 will be perfect for you! You will go on more difficult and enduring routes for one week with a mountain guide to practice and upgrade your alpine skills maximally. The course is designed to enable you to go on complex tours on mixed terrains independently.  

Welness

The NSAC also offers an extended program for motivated alpinists that want to take their independence to the next level. By going out with an inspired group of people and more extensive preparation, more challenging climbing tours can be made during the alpine week than any other course. Moreover, this course is of extra value, if you have ambitions to become an Alpine Instructor. The focus during the C3 Wellness will be on further development and expansion of climbing techniques and making more difficult and technical tours. All this means there is more required of the students than on a regular course. Similar to the C2 wellness, you are expected to go on weekends a few times - between January and July - to prepare for the real work in the Alps. This includes getting your rope skills and climbing techniques up to standard. A large amount of perseverance will be needed, because it is an intensive program that can be quite heavy - certainly in the beginning. The eventual goal lies in the summer: for the duration of one week - under the guidance of guides and / or Alpine Instructors - tours will be made and training will be given. After this week you will go on a one-week tour with the group, without direct guidance, possibly with coaching from the valley. 
If you want to learn more about the courses, you can either read more on the NSAC website (https://nsac.alpenclub.nl/alpiene-beginnerscursus-c1/) or watch the recording of the evening with Jan van den Berg (ZP-comittee and Ibexer) about the summer program.