When Kurt Blair was a seventh grader a Miller Middle School, the school had a career day where the students talked about what they wanted to do when they grew up.

Blair showed up wearing a wool sweater, knickers and long socks while carrying a rope. He told his class that he wanted to be a mountain guide on Chamonix, one of the most famous mountains in the world located in France.

Blair came from a mountain family and said he spent most of his life climbing. His dad, Robert Blair Jr., was a geology professor at Fort Lewis College and founded the Mountain Studies Institute in Durango and Silverton. His grandfather, Robert Blair, was a member of the Colorado Mountain Club in the 1930s and did several first ascents in the San Juan Mountains, including West Dallas Peak near Telluride in 1932.

He said his dad took him climbing in Ecuador, Yosemite and in the Tetons.

Now, about 40 years later, Blair is one of fewer than 200 Americans certified to guide internationally on mountains around the world.

Blair was recently the 186th American to get certified from the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations, meaning he’ll be able to guide in Chamonix, just like he wanted to when he was in middle school. Blair said he’s currently studying French because France also requires some passing proficiency in the language to guide there.

“That will be a lifelong dream realized when I’m able to guide there,” he said. “(The certification) opens a lot of doors and creates a lot of opportunities; I’ve always wanted to guide Matterhorn and Mount Blanc and the Haute Route between Zermat and Chamonix. For Americans, once you get the certificate, you can guide anywhere in the world.”

Blair is a guide for the San Juan Mountain Guides and also teaches avalanche courses for it.

To get the certification was a seven-year process, he said. The guides have to master three main categories to get certified: skiing, rock and ice climbing and also alpine climbing/mountaineering.

“Mountaineering is probably my favorite,” he said.

In each discipline, they have to pass a basic course, an advanced course and then an exam, often years apart. They learn navigation, risk management, rescues, technical systems like anchors and rope work and more. They also have to have a high-level of ability, in all conditions, in each of the disciplines.

“It’s kind of the graduate school of the outdoor world,” he said.

To even qualify for the courses requires completing several routes that are big enough and challenging enough.

For the ski exam, Blair said he had to ski glaciated terrain, so he went to Ecuador and rode on four high volcanoes with crevasses and steep terrain.

“The barrier to even apply is reasonably high,” he said.

Blair graduated from Durango High School in 1986. He was a Nordic ski racer and also raced with the Durango Wheel Club when he was younger, in addition to climbing mountains. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he studied physics. Blair the received a second bachelor’s degree from Colorado School of Mines and attended graduate school at Oregon State. He came back to the area in 2002 to work for the Southern Ute Growth Fund. When he got laid off by the tribe, he decided it was a good time to try guiding. With the San Juan Mountain Guides, he takes people on some of the more technical peaks in the Chicago Basin around Telluride as well as the Weminuche Wildernesss.

“The San Juans are a pretty remarkable area; there’s a lifetime of climbing,” he said, adding that traveling to different areas helps him appreciate what’s here.

San Juan Guides also offers international trips.

“They’re very, very fun trips and I always meet wonderful people,” he said. “You create lifelong friendships because intense trips tend to create lasting friendships. It’s fun to travel internationally and experience different cultures. I absolutely want to go back to the Alps, Nepal and South America. If I have the opportunity to introduce those areas to guests, all the better.”

And while fewer than 200 guides from the U.S. are IFMGA certified, two other Durango guides also have the certification: Marc Ripperger and Josh Kling.