My story #16: Sandra Schmidt, Mountain Leader and Tour Guide

WRITTEN by SANDRA SCHMIDT & ANNE ENSOLL

In this series we’re sharing the stories of outdoor instructors, mountain guides and enthusiasts who work and play in the mountains. Links to all the previous posts can be found at the bottom of this post. 

We first met Sandra Schmidt in March 2018 when she came on our Contour Masterclass in preparation for her Mountain Leader assessment, which she completed with us in April 2019. She is currently a mentee on our Chris Ensoll Mountain Mentor programme.

Old Man of Storr, August 2019

What are your first memories of adventures in the outdoors as a child or teenager?

Growing up by the Baltic sea in rural north Germany, my early memories are of the sea, sandy beaches and what seemed to me as a child endless sunny summer months, camping in the garden, BBQs, roaming the countryside with my friends and riding the farmer’s ponies.

My mother, an incomer to north Germany from the South, shared her love of the mountains with my brother and me, and part of our summer holidays were spent in the Alps. One of my earliest memories, I can’t have been older than 6 or 7 years, is of our hike up the Watzmann. It was only some years later that I realised that the Watzmannhaus, our destination, isn’t quite the summit but it was still very impressive. Much later, in 2003, I returned and completed the Watzman traverse. Great memories of our first hut to hut overnight adventures as children, lots of cake, picknicks surrounded by marmots and snowball fights in summer laid the foundation for my love of travel and exploration.

What do you remember about your outdoor adventures when you started doing them independently?

In my teens I abandoned alpine adventures with my parents in favour of cycling and camping trips with my friends. Growing up in a rural area, I was always out on my bicycle with friends, swimming in lakes in summer, ice skating in winter, so the transition was very natural. It just happened. Organised school activities and outdoor education such as the DoE did not exist.

My father had a wooden clinker boat with a small sail which he used to explore the coast and rivers of Germany in his 20s. By the time my brother and I messed around in it, it was a bit leaky but still fun. I later got into sea kayaking and would ‘disappear’ for a weekend with a tent and some food.

As a student I volunteered for a charity offering holidays for children whose parents could not afford one. I spent several summers in the Hohe Tauern having fun with the kids (there were some responsible adults around) but, unfortunately, I have no idea which summits we climbed. That would have been useful for my Dlog later in life but at that time working in the outdoors had never crossed my mind.

Devil's Staircase, June 2018

When did it change from a hobby to a career?

My (re)discovery of my love of the mountains has been very recent. Fast-forward 25 years, I somehow ended up in Manchester and started to explore the Peak District and Snowdonia. Snowdonia definitely won over the Peak District. My first holidays in the Lake District were still very much water-based, sailing on Coniston Water. As in Snowdonia, the mountains baffled me a bit. Where were the sign posts? The huts and the cake? This wasn’t like the mountains I remembered from my childhood. And were these really mountains? They are not very high, no snowfields in summer.

An abandoned hike in Snowdonia with my husband (I don’t remember which summit we were aiming for)  - are these clouds too low/dark/menacing, are you sure it’s this way? – frustrated me enough to take some action. In 2013, I joined a weekend navigation for beginners course in the Lake District. I just saw a flyer in a shop in Coniston and signed up. That weekend was a real eye opener: spending a day in pouring rain and enjoying it, stomping over boggy High Seat, pacing, attacking, hand-railing, catching – it was all a bit of a blur at the end. However, as none of my friends and (British) family members shared the lure of the mountains, this weekend gave me the confidence to venture out further on my own and to get away from the crowds of the Old Man of Coniston.

By the end of 2015, I was lucky to have a base in the Lake District and to be able to leave my old job, assuming I would do more of the same as a freelancer, just moving my desk to the Lakes. A chance conversation on a New Year’s day walk in 2016 saw me three months later on an assessment weekend in the Lake District for a British walking holiday company. In May 2016, I spent my first week as a volunteer walk leader in Cornwall, not really sure what I had let myself in for. Another chance encounter that week, this time with a German tour guide, let me to drop an email to a German tour operator specialising in walking holidays in the UK - and I haven’t looked back since.

In the Cairngorms, January 2020

What has the path been since then?

While working as a tour guide on walking holidays in the UK, I continued volunteering as a walk leader, aiming to get as much work experience and training under my belt as quickly as possible. I must have got something right, already a year later in 2017 I was leading walking holidays in European countries for British guests. Cornwall is pretty but I realised quickly that I preferred leading in the mountains of Wales and the Lake District. And I had set my eyes on Scotland! So I got stuck in -  learning about the British mountains’ geology, fauna & flora, catching up on Welsh and Scottish history, volunteering with the Cumbria Wildlife Trust as a nature reserve walk leader. I passed the Lowland Leader assessment in 2017, followed by the Mountain Leader training later that year. When I wasn’t on tour, I would plan my personal mountain days out, especially in Scotland.

Things just took off from there and looking back I can’t believe my luck in stumbling over a career I didn’t even know existed when I planned my exit from the office. During Summer 2017, I was leading my first easy walking holiday in Scotland (no Munros climbed), by 2018 I was regularly working in Glen Coe and on Skye, and in 2019 I landed my first contract developing a new product, a walking holiday in the Outer Hebrides, spending a fabulous 10-days exploring the islands.

I very much enjoy not only the work as a mountain leader but also acting in a way as a ‘cultural interpreter’ for my German-speaking guests in the UK and my (mainly) British guests on European holidays. I am lucky that I have lived and worked in different countries and can work in four European languages. So as old and new skills and experiences were coming together, a business developed, and the  International Mountain Leader was the obvious next step. Pre-Covid 19, I would have done the IML summer training this April, followed by trips to the Spanish Sierra Nevada and the Romanian Alps which I had organised over the winter. And it would have been my 4th season working in Scotland.

Selfie with the Matterhorn, August 2018

If you could give one piece of advice to someone who wants to work in the outdoors what would it be?

Be very open, be curious, don’t rule out anything! Chris introduced me to the joy of steep ground and I was so enthusiastic that I booked a private day with Chris with my husband in preparation for our private alpine adventures. I can now even be found on top of a climbing wall and enjoying it.  I thought I would hate the cold, I thought I ought ‘to do winter’ for the IML and was found chasing the snow in Scotland this winter, loving it.

Read the full My Story series

My Story #1: Chris Ensoll, International Mountain Guide
My Story #2: John Kettle, Climbing & Mountain Biking Coach
My Story #3: Kelvyn James, International Mountain Leader
My Story #4: Anne Ensoll, Business Manager And Ex-Outdoor Instructor
My Story #5: Michael Curry, All-Round Outdoor Instructor and Business Owner
My Story #6: Esther Foster, Freelance Outdoor Instructor
My Story #7: Rob Pugh, Mountaineering Instructor and Stay-at-Home Dad
My Story #8: Colin Reilly, Outdoor Instructor & Church Pastor
My Story #9: Rhiannon Pritchard, Arctic Nature Guide and Academic
My Story #10: Alan Kimber, Mountain Guide and Accommodation Provider
My Story #11: Claire Hendrickse, Freelance Outdoor Instructor
My Story #12: Alice Kerr, Outdoor Instructor & Long Distance Runner
My Story #13: Ben Roe, Outdoor Education Graduate and Climbing Wall Route Setter
My Story #14: Susan Byrne, Mountain Leader and Outdoor Youth Worker
My Story #15: Jon Chamberlain, Mountaineering & Climbing Instructor and Business Owner

What about you?

If you are an outdoor professional, or have been in the past, and you’d like to inspire others with your story, we’d love to hear from you - send us an email.