Our backcountry mountain guides have decades of training and experience guiding and climbing around the world. They have also gone through extensive training with the American Mountain Guides Association, the premier educational and testing organization for mountain guides in the United States. Not only notable mountain athletes in their own right, our dedicated professionals distinguish themselves by being first class educators.
Each team member strives to help our guests learn skills, connect with local people and environments, and create lasting change in their personal lives. They are all passionate about what they do and work hard to offer our clients an extraordinary experience.
Christian Santelices believes that experiencing nature first hand has the power to transform people’s lives. As a fully certified IFMGA/UIAGM Mountain Guide, professional photographer, public speaker, writer, and community activist, his career has been dedicated to helping facilitate this process. During the summer months you’ll find him working in the Tetons as a Chief Guide for Exum Mountain Guides. The rest of the year he teaches avalanche courses, ski guides, and leads custom adventures and corporate community building and leadership development retreats worldwide through Aerial Boundaries.
As an activist, Christian dreams of creating a global community by engaging groups from around the world in common conservation efforts. To this end he established the Global Community Project (GCP), a non-profit organization that combines outdoor education, service learning, and cultural exchange for students and professionals. The GCP provided the very first sustainable trail building course to the rangers of Torres del Paine National Park, Chile. In 2008 he brought Jackson Hole high school students to Chilean Patagonia where they teamed up with local youths, researchers, and conservationists to work on trail building projects and participate in a study of the endangered huemul deer.
Christian has made notable first ascents of big walls in Patagonia including The Dream (VII 5.10 A4+) on the East Face of Cerro Escudo in Torres del Paine National Park and numerous first ascents in the Sierra Nevada, California.
With three friends he did the first (and only) ascent of twenty of Steck and Roper’s “Fifty Classic Climbs of North America” in a single twenty-day enchainment.
As a guide, Santelices has led numerous expeditions to Patagonia, Aconcogua, Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the Alps of Switzerland, Italy and France, South Africa, the Pyranees of Spain, the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, Fiji, Alaska, and México. He has been featured skiing and climbing in numerous film, television and print articles, including two Warren Miller films (Journey and Impact).
Christian lives in Teton Valley with his wife Sue Muncaster, daughter Mariela and son Nico.
Accomplishments:
Internationally Certified AMGA/UIAGM Mountain Guide
BA in Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley
MA in Environment and Community, Antioch University, Seattle
Slow Food in the Tetons was founded by Teton Valley resident Sue Muncaster in 2006. While researching a book she was writing on conscientious eating she came across the Slow Food USA website and their approach to food, the environment, culture and family spoke to her in a way few other activist organizations had before. Muncaster’s passion for the local food movement and desire to contribute to a healthier, happier future for her children inspired her to open the chapter here in the Tetons.
Don Carpenter has been guiding and teaching in the mountains since 1998. Don works for Alpine Ascents International on Denali, Mt. Rainier, Kilimanjaro, and has worked many remote expeditions with the National Outdoor Leadership School. His expeditions have taken him to Alaska, the Washington Cascades, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Antarctica, Chile, Argentina, India, and Africa.
Don is a co-owner of the American Avalanche Institute in Jackson, WY. His winters are busy teaching avalanche courses for AAI and skiing. Don lives on the west slope of the Tetons with his wife Sarah. He is an AMGA Ski Mountaineering Guide and loves hunting elk and running rivers.
Bill has climbed and skied throughout the western US and Canada, with forays into Mexico, Peru, Nepal, India and various European venues. Bill is known for his thoughtful, patient, and thorough style of teaching and his wide selection of guiding techniques. So whether you are new to climbing and just want to see if you like it or you are looking to ski from the summit of the Grand Teton in any season… you will find yourself doing more than you expected you would be able to, and having a great time.
Exum Chief Guide
American Avalanche Institute Instructor
20+ years of guiding
Argentine-American Marcos Couch has spent his whole adult life seeking adventure, and sharing it with his guests. Christian first met Marcos in 1996, co-guiding a traverse of the Southern Patagonia Ice Cap, a circumnavigation around the Fitzroy/Cerro Torre massif. At the time, they and their clients were probably within the first 100 people to complete this now popular traverse.
Marcos’ climbing career spans over thirty years and covers many of the Great Ranges on the planet. He has done ascents in the Himalaya, Alps, and throughout the Andes. He has climbed El Capitán in Yosemite by several routes, and has done numerous first and second ascents in Patagonia including the Argentine Route on Fitzroy. He has rafted the length of the Santa Cruz River in Argentine Patagonia and driven in the Camel Trophy series. But most importantly for Aerial Boundaries, Marcos is a consummate guide with over a quarter century of experience. And no one knows Patagonia better.
Marcos is a High-Altitude Guide certified by the Asociation Argentina de Guías de Montaña and licensed by the International Federation of Mountain Guides (IFMGA/UIAGM). He speaks English, French, and of course Spanish fluently. Marcos lives in Bariloche, Argentina.
Luca was born in Biella in 1975 and has a degree in industrial chemistry. He started going to the mountains when he was a kid thanks to his parents, first as a hiker in the Piemonte and Val d’Aosta mountains. As a teenager he discovered rock climbing and alpine ski mountaineering. Those became he greatest passions.
Luca decided to quit his job in the laboratory to become a backcountry mountain guide in 2001 and dedicate himself full-time to the mountains. He started the course and earned his alpine guide aspirant license in 2003. He became an alpine guide in 2006, and started immediately to work full-time as an alpine guide, accomplishing his dream of transforming his great passion for mountains into his job.
He dedicated a brief period of hislife to alpine ski mountaineering competitions participating in various races, among them the Mezzalama Trophy. In the last few years he has specialized in multi-day alpine ski mountaineering traverses with clients from all over Europe. Alpine ski mountaineering, rock climbing, and alpinism: He does not have a favorite activity, he just follows the seasons, all of them leave him with great satisfaction and allow him to visit extraordinary places like Chile for skiing on the volcanoes, Argentina for climbing Aconcagua, and rock climbing on the crags in Spain and Greece looking for warm weather when cold is arriving at his home.
The greatest satisfaction for Luca is for sure the happiness he can see in his clients when we look back over the day just completed and plan future ascensions in front of a good glass of wine.