The centralised management system that works how your guides already work.
Built with IFMGA guides.
Ascents was built because the guiding profession is the only high-consequence profession in the world that still develops safety knowledge primarily through survived incidents. The near-miss that makes a veteran guide exceptional leaves every other guide exactly where they were.
Ascents CGMS implements your Safety and Quality Management Systems at the operational level — whilst building your institutional knowledge base with every trip. The result is a system where every guide on your team has access to what your most experienced guide knows, before they need to learn it the hard way.
Built with IFMGA-certified guides. Informed by Special Operations risk management methodology and High Reliability Organisation principles. Designed for the profession that cannot afford to learn slowly.
What we build
A complete guide management system.
- Safety Management System (SMS) — implemented at the operational level, not as a policy document
- Quality Management System (QMS) — consistent service delivery across every guide on your team
- Institutional knowledge — every trip, every near-miss, every lesson stays in the system
- WorkSafe and ISO alignment — documentation your auditor is looking for, produced as a by-product
- Avalanche Safety Plans — generated from trip data, acknowledged by every assigned guide
- Client risk briefing — waterfall evidence from in-app confirmation to digital signature
- Auditor access — time-bounded read-only view for WorkSafe officers and OutdoorsMark auditors
- Post-trip client feedback — ISO 9001 customer satisfaction monitoring, built in
The one thing we will never do
The decision is always the guide's.
Our platform records it. It never makes it. A guide using Ascents still needs everything a guide without it has. That will not change.
Our mission
Reduce avoidable deaths
in the mountains.
Match international best-practice risk management methodologies and expert IFMGA Mountain Guides' experience to develop a system that reduces avoidable deaths in the mountains.
For mountaineers: trip planning, logbook, and the professional risk framework — free. For certified guides and guide companies: full SMS, QMS, institutional knowledge, and the tools to build an operation that gets safer with every trip.
Values: find the root cause — do not treat symptoms. Challenge conventional norms to achieve operational excellence.
The founding challenge
The guiding profession currently gets safer the same way it has for a hundred years. Guides develop judgment by surviving close calls. The near-miss that stays in one guide's head is lost when they retire. The apprentice learns by being present when things almost go wrong.
This is the accepted model. It is also the only high-consequence profession in the world that still works this way.
Aviation doesn't train pilots by letting them nearly crash. Special Forces continuously evolve their tactics, techniques, and procedures to narrow the margin for error. These industries built feedback loops that don't require incidents to generate learning.
The guiding profession has the knowledge. It does not yet have the infrastructure to transfer it. Ascents is that infrastructure.
Get in touch
Questions, feedback, partnership enquiries, or just want to talk about the mountains — we'd love to hear from you.