Todd Vogel
Todd Vogel is a mountain guide, outdoor educator and retail mountain shop owner from Bishop, California,. Originally from Michigan, he moved to Bishop from Santa Cruz in 1988 to be closer to the mountains and the outdoors. His first job in Bishop was digging ditches for a local mountain resort – not the glamour job he was hoping for! His future wife-to-be also made the move with him and started working at the local mountain shop. Fast forward nearly thirty years and now Chris and Todd both own the store “Eastside Sports”, having purchased it in 2012. The store employs fourteen people and Todd currently serves as the bookkeeper – a position he had there for a year in 1989 – advertising director, CFO, HR head, and maintenance supervisor (toilet cleaner). The joys of owning a small business.
Todd is a well-regarded leader in the outdoor education community, having served on the board of directors of the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) in the early 2000’s and as the founding president of the thirty-four hundred member Professional Climbing Instructor’s Association (PCIA) from 2005 to the present. He is one of the founders of the PCIA Slope Access Technician program, which seeks to standardize techniques used to access technical terrain in the transportation and geo-hazard mitigation industries. He frequently speaks at outdoor leadership conferences on topics ranging from professionalism in climbing instruction to how to bring wilderness stewardship programs into outdoor education. Todd also serves as a Search and Rescue team member and a member of the Inyo County Planning Commission.
Recognizing the importance of helping future generations learn about the outdoors Todd founded the non-profit “Eastern Sierra Youth Outdoors”, in partnership with the local Rotary chapter, with grant funding in 2015. The free program takes up to thirty youth ages 12 – 17 on a five day climbing and backpacking camp each spring.
Todd spends about 16 weeks a year on outdoor programs. When he’s not pretending to help run Eastside Sports or out on a program, he loves to run with his dog, bird watch, hike, and try to ignore all the house maintenance projects he really should be doing.
Contact
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760-920-0774