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| Andy Carson, who taught for NOLS
for many years before buying Jackson Hole Mountain
Guides in 1984. |
Andy Carson
Climbing Guide
“I got a letter from Paul Petzoldt in the
early winter of 1965. The letter was an invitation
to attend this new school called NOLS and I jumped
at the chance,” reminisces Andy Carson about
the school’s early days. “It’s
going to be neat,” Petzoldt continued. He
was right.
In the summer of 1965, Carson attended the first
NOLS course in the Wind River Range with instructors
Tap Tapley and Paul Petzoldt. “The first
group was very small,” says Carson. “After
that I worked summer courses until 1970.”
In 1970, Carson recalls that NOLS experienced a
major shift and expansion. “The school received
some national press from the Alcoa Hour, then a popular
television show, who sent Mike Wadleigh,” says
Carson. “[Wadleigh] was the same guy who filmed
Woodstock.”
Growing up in Pasadena, Calif., Carson toured around
the country as a child and young adult. “We
used to do a lot of classic American car-camping.
We would scramble to the top of summits of this and
that, but nothing technical. My first roped climb
was at the Wisconsin Dells.”
When the young outdoorsmen moved to Wyoming to join
Petzoldt, he was aware of the mission for the school,
which was intended to help shape outdoor travel in
the United States.
“Paul had been working for Outward Bound before
he started NOLS. Outward Bound had only one school
in Colorado at the time and was still very much based
around English outdoor style,” says Carson. “Paul
wanted to start a school that stressed camping, group
dynamics and safe mountain travel.”
In 1984, after working for NOLS, Outward Bound,
Exum and other guiding services, Carson bought Jackson
Hole Mountain Guides from Berry Corbet, an influential
mountaineer who was paralyzed after a helicopter
accident. In 2000, he sold the guiding company to
former NOLS graduates. He is still considered an
expert on mountaineering in the Tetons and serves
on the board of the Access Fund.
Carson is now 57 and lives in Wilson, Wyo., where
he has lived since 1972. These days, he manages property
that he bought in Jackson Hole many years ago. “Retired?
No, I’m enjoying a life that has a little more
freedom than working a 9 to 5 kind of day.”
Carson still occasionally climbs with his son and
daughter.
- Will Waterman
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