A Note on Mountain Guide Pins

“The true value of things resides in their soul. The physical object itself doesn’t have much importance. It’s the use we make of this object that is its true value.” Peter Stelzner, Chamonix Ski Artisan

At the dawn of mountain guiding, late 1800s through the start of WWII, it wasn’t hard to identify the mountain guides — they were the guys that led the way to the top of the peak, often dragging an English client behind them. But with the rise of professional guiding in the Alps and Canada following WWII, many national guide organizations made beautiful pins for their members. Mountain guides could display these pins while climbing with their clients, thus distinguishing themselves from the amateur enthusiasts that began to crowd the peaks in the post-War era.

The Swiss were early and prolific producers of guide pins, representing the guiding cantons of Berne, Uri, Valais and Grabunden. These pins, along with the pin of the Swiss National Guides Organization (SBV), adorned professional Swiss Guides as early as 1960. Adjacent alpine guides observed their Swiss colleagues with envy and quickly travelled back to their own valleys in Italy, France and Austria to produce pins of their respective collectives. Since these pins were worn only by unions whose members had passed the rigorous standards of mountain guide training first initiated by the Swiss, they became cult items throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. A French pin in Chamonix or an Austrian pin in St. Anton virtually guaranteed a guide the attention of the most beautiful woman present a Le Bar National or Mooserwirt.

As early participants in professional guiding, the Canadians (ACMG) were quick to produce their own pin in the 1970s, mostly because the burgeoning heliski industry in British Columbia recruited dozens of Swiss, Austrian and French pin-flouting foreigners to the remote heliski lodges.

Guide pins flourished in Europe throughout the 1970s and into the late 1980s as new countries were added to the International standard, and as their members eagerly sought to display their status to others. Germany, Sweden and Norway all produced pins of this era. Even communist Slovenia felt compelled to produce a pin, albeit a dour Stalinist version. Soon, visiting guides with homeland pins chased after the same groupies in Zermatt as the landed Valais guides who called the valley home for generations, often with noteworthy success.

The Swiss did not like this.

So beginning in the 1990s, Swiss guides of every canton began sporting the IFGMA pin as an indication of their lofty certification as the international standard. Once again, their fellow guides from Tyrol and Haute Savoie quickly followed suit, and by the summer of 1992 one could not tell the French from the Swedes, the Germans from the Canadians. The rapid adoption of the IFMGA pin by member country guides in the 1990s once again leveled the playing field for the Swiss in their amorous pursuits, and there was soon peace among the lucky members of this elite, international society of guides.

All of this guide pin stuff had sorted itself out long before the application of the American Mountain Guides Association to the international standard in 1997. When we were finally accepted to the IFMGA as a full member in 2001, the AMGA had produced a series of lame pins for each discipline for several years. All of these became obsolete the minute the U.S. joined the IFMGA.

You see, prior to the advent of the IFMGA pin, a local mountain guide would rather give you his pinkie than his guide pin, a badge he paid for literally in sweat and blood. This was no tourist souvenir, and could not be bought anywhere, for any amount of money. It was a heritage, a tradition, a way of life for generations of alpinists whose families pioneered the great routes of their valleys, and who earned a living taking visitors to the summit of their home peaks.

When I joined the Board of the AMGA in 2001 at the invitation of Phil Powers and Dick Jackson, I insisted on a new pin classification, Lifetime Member, which recognized individuals (like me) who were fully certified to host a Board dinner, but little else. While it gave me no status to speak of, my Lifetime pin enabled me to barter with visiting mountain guides for their cantonal or country pin. I found this exchange was most effective during international guides meetings, about the time the third bottle of vintage Burgundy was opened.

By this time, the IFMGA pin was well established, and the local guide pins were relegated to the cigar box. Mind you, no one was anxious to dispose of them, and no full guide would ever give one to a client under any circumstances. But these beautiful reminders of our provincial roots could be shared with another guide under the right circumstances.

I began collecting guide pins in earnest when I joined the AMGA board, and now possess the finest collection in the world. Each was given to me by a fellow mountain guide after a memorable climb on my terrain or theirs, and many were from the Head Guide of the representative region. Some are antiques; others were produced by IFMGA member countries at my request. In each pin there is an adventure that I treasure and a mountain guide that I admire.