Committed to providing safe, supportive, state-of-the-art instruction
and guiding that maximizes the client’s experience and minimizes
physical and emotional risk and environmental impact.

Our philosophy is to continually develop and share cutting edge ideas and
techniques that improve the delivery of our instruction to our clients and that
promote responsible guiding, recreational climbing and wilderness use.

Acadia Mountain Guides, Inc. was established in 1993 by three friends who had
been climbing in the local area since the early eighties. The pursuit of excellence
was of utmost importance to these founding directors and remains central to
our mission today. Client safety, guide safety and quality of the experience has
always been our mantra.

Each of the owners had degrees in outdoor recreation management, an extensive
climbing background, and over a dozen years of outdoor leadership experience
to draw upon.

Jon Tierney was a co-founder of the University of Maine outdoor program in
1983–84 leading that program to national prominence over the next several years.
Chris Damboise and Liz Dunn were senior instructors for the university program
for several years and played a large part in its success as well.

Jon and Liz had the additional experience of several seasons of employment for
the National Park Service as backcountry climbing rangers where they regularly
dealt with rescue and climbing management. Meanwhile Chris had been employed
as an instructor and climbing director for Hurricane Island Outward Bound for
many years.

They were some of the first participants in formal guide training programs in the
United States in the early 90’s and in 1993 Jon became one of the first Americans
to earn an AMGA Rock Guide certification.

Acadia Mountain Guides successfully sought accreditation by the American
Mountain Guides Association in the spring of 1993 and opened doors in Bar Harbor
that same season.

Over the next several years Acadia Mountain Guides steadily grew and
established itself as one of the leading climbing schools in New England. The
standards and practices in place at Acadia Mountain Guides in the late 90’s
formed the basis for the development of national standards and a teaching
curriculum for climbing instruction which was developed by Jon and adopted
by the American Mountain Guides Association in 1998.

Today, the Single Pitch Instructor certification is highly respected as an entry
level climbing instructor certification. The Professional Climbing Instructors’
Association, co-founded by Jon in 2007 to specifically address the training and
education of climbing instructors also embraced these standards to an even
greater degree.

In 2000–01 AMG transitioned to a year round climbing school with ice climbing,
international expeditions, wilderness medicine, avalanche education and the
ever popular winter ascents of Katahdin being added to our offerings.

The idea of a summer climbing camp was proposed in 2001 by two AMG employees.
At that time very few specialized climbing camps existed in the U.S. Most of those
that did exist were run by well-meaning recreational climbers for summer camps,
universities, and climbing gyms.

AMG raised safety standards and brought a new level of professionalism and fun
to specialized summer camps by utilizing professionally trained climbing guides
as summer camp leaders.

Three camps were offered that first season and were led by Silas Rossi and Libby
Wilder. The feedback was excellent and a new era for rock climbing and adventure
camps was born!

Today, Acadia Mountain Guides Climbing School offers a diverse selection
of climbing and adventure camps for kids and young adults between
the ages of 6 – 18 and we continue to explore innovative methods and
launch new and exciting programs.

This year, we expect well over 100 campers to join us on the rocks to explore
the vertical world, meet new friends and have a summer of fun.

Will you be one of them?