It was inevitable. Canadian companies CTOMS and Kili-Climbing are collaborating. When Chris Kopp of CTOMS started developing the TRACE Systems (micro rope systems) unveiled last year, he realized it could be used in more and more diverse applications. Then, he and his business partner used it as an ultra-light weight system climbing in Uganda for glacier travel and rappelling. This past summer they did their first lead climbs on it. Along with CTOMS’ Tactical Assault Climbers Course (TAC-C) that they’ve been running for two years now, the natural evolution was to take the CTOMS rope access and complex terrain programs to the next level. Kili-Climbing has been that enabler.
CTOMS is now partnering with Kili-Climbing, which provides logistical planning and support in Africa to their Complex-terrain & High Altitude Seminars (CHAOS, as in their slogan, “Control the Chaos”), it enables them to provide experience based training at high altitude and in foreign countries. The diversity of location options provides a broad spectrum of terrain, latitude and altitude options, beyond what is available in the continental US. The client’s specific capability requirements/desires will determine the venue. Current venues include Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mt. Stanley and Speke in Uganda, Mt. Kenya in Kenya and Mt. Logan in Canada. While the African locations provide milder equatorial high altitude options with very diverse terrain and foreign travel experience, Mt. Logan in Canada provides a significantly lower traffic option than Mt. McKinley in Alaska, and provides a great Arctic, high latitude, high altitude, extreme cold weather training environment.
The difference between training with the CTOMS/Kili-Climbing team and hiring another African tour provider or civilian guide company is that the CTOMS/Kili-Climbing team understands and caters specifically to the military, and in particular SOF applications. They speak your language. These aren’t tourist vacations and they aren’t going to put their clients on busy, standard tourist routes, and most of all, they aren’t going to teach them civilian practices that contradict or conflict with tactical requirements. Instead, they cater the instruction, routes, objectives and activities specifically to the tactical training objectives. These are customized training programs built specifically to military SOF personnel and taught by instructors with military backgrounds and certified guides with experience instructing SOF.
For US units that require a contract with a US company, they work with The Peak out of Butte, Montana. CTOMS can also be contracted directly. For personal trips in Africa, contact Kili-Climbing directly.
www.ctoms.ca/high_altitude_operations
kili-climbing.com
