Back in the early 1970s when I lived and worked in Switzerland, I joined the Swiss Alpine Club and spent several glorious summers moving from novice to intermediate climber. It turned out that mountain climbing was more to my taste than rock climbing; perhaps this was because there was more variety in mountain climbing which, after all, has rock climbing as a subset. Or perhaps it was because mountain climbing placed more emphasis on stamina over peak athletic performance. In any event, I learned that to be successful in this activity required merging basic technical skills with good people skills and good judgment. I found that there were lots of climbers but few really good climbingparty leaders. So I tried to figure out what made the good leaders really good.