Diny
Diny Harrison enjoying an early repeat of Unterberger’s classic Adamants route on Serendipity Spire, Old Milwaukee 5.9. Photo by the Author.
There are only a few thousand IFGMA Guides in the world, spread across 27 member countries. It’s a small community bonded to the mountains and to each other through their shared passion and proficiency. As a guide and as a client, I’ve skied and climbed with many of the best Mountain Guides around the world.
People often ask me who is my favorite Mountain Guide, and the answer is always the same: Diny Harrison.
There was never a Guide like Diny before her - she was the first woman to become a full IFMGA Guide in North America. Diny did it in Canada, where she grew up skiing, climbing and kayaking, and demonstrated a high-level skillset in all three disciplines as a teenager. She then applied herself to snow study as a patrolman at Lake Louise ski area, and worked her way up the alpine competence hierarchy across British Columbia.
Diny began heliski guiding for CMH when she passed her ski exam in 1988, and spent more than fifteen years as a Lead Guide, mostly in the Monashees and in Revelstoke, where she ran the Lodge after Buck Corrigan. She became a full IFGMA Guide in 1992, when we first met and starting climbing together. Now she’s the Lead Guide at Mustang Powder, a classic Cat skiing operation west of Revelstoke.
Knowing Diny as well as I do, it’s not surprising that she became a Guide. Her skiing and climbing skills are world-class. Knowing her peers in the ACMG as well as I do, it’s astonishing that she put up with that bunch of old-school knuckleheads long enough to earn a Pin.
But there’s something more to her than a demonstrated competence in the mountains: Diny Harrison is a truly entertaining person to be around. She is hilarious and completely unintimidated by anyone. She has an endless supply of dirty jokes. She looks you in the eye and tells you what she thinks - there isn’t a single strand of passive-aggressive DNA in her genome. She speaks four languages fluently and is funny in all of them. These are all important qualities in a Mountain Guide, and they are all abundant with Diny.
Occasionally, we encounter VCs who consistently produce a great result in the funds they manage, but it’s hard to identify their secret sauce - at some point you have to admit that it’s talent. Same is true of Diny - she’s just really good at Mountain Guiding.