Website Design for Ground Up Climbing Guides

Consulting + Website Design for Sister Companies

After a few years running a climbing guide company (Ground Up Climbing Guides), Clay Tyson started a backcountry ski guiding company to complement his summer business — Skin Up Ski Tours.

He built his Ground Up website himself on Weebly a few years prior, and after some consulting discussions on that website, he knew he needed a more professional solution for his Skin Up website and eventually for his Ground Up website.

We worked together to figure out what his website needed to work for him and what his future clients needed to see to know, like, and trust (see: book) him and his ski guides.

Planning on a client base of Los Angeles and San Francisco young professionals, we knew the site needed to look good and be super easy to navigate and engage with. We didn’t want it to have any of that mountain “charm”/dysfunction many local business websites have.

Squarespace was a super easy platform for Clay to handle on his own after I built the site. With limited budget and a seasonal business, he wanted to avoid recurring costs beyond Squarespace’s monthly plan.

After building the Skin Up website, it was clear Clay’s old DIY Weebly site for Ground Up wasn’t going to cut it in comparison. He wanted the brands to be clearly connected, and linking the Ground Up site from the Skin Up site felt a bit embarrassing.

So we mirrored the Skin Up site for a new site for Ground Up, tweaking things as needed for the different client audiences, and created a second site with complementary branding, layout, and user experience so Clay can be proud of both websites — and manage them both easily on his own.

A couple years later, Clay pivoted his businesses once again, replacing Skin Up Ski Tours with Pedal Up Bike Tours. We built this new Squarespace site in the same fashion with the same ideal client persona but with a bike tour guiding focus.