Rope Technician and Climbing Instructor - Jun Leung

Describe your work

My name is Jun Leung and I am a mountain guide. I have been leading rock climbing lessons and guiding work in Hong Kong for a long time. I also help organize outdoor training and leadership programs for social service organizations and schools.

My main work in Hong Kong is as a mountain and rock climbing instructor, as well as doing training and education. Additionally, I organize overseas mountaineering trips, like going to the European Alps in France, Switzerland, and Italy during the summer for climbing trips and training. And in the winter, I go to Japan and Korea to do snow and ice activities.

Apart from mountaineering guiding and training, I also respond to client needs by designing custom training, leadership development, and team building programs for more corporate-type services. Thirdly, I provide technical support for commercial photo and video shoots in high altitude, mountainous environments, helping with safety setups so they can film safely and successfully.

Who are your clients?

My clients are quite diverse. The typical participants in my learning programs or adventure trips are friends aged 20 to 40. But because I respond to various client needs and get invitations from industry partners, I also often organize activities for younger kids, from 6-7 years old up to 14-15 years old, doing things like rock climbing and outdoor adventure education.

How do you promote your work and why do they choose you?

Promoting this kind of work relies a lot on referrals from my clients and industry contacts. But in the future, I also plan to do some social media advertising. However, the reach from my current client base is already quite good.

It's mainly word-of-mouth, some of it is slow, but I feel that if I do a good job with my service, my customers will have different introductions, and they will come back again. The main reason is that they may be based on my personal character, my business, and my past training.

Describe a normal working week

 A normal working week for me, which can actually be very different. For example, recently I've been helping with some educational activities, some winter activities, and I'll be doing the same thing for a whole week, with many people repeating the same activities, like rock climbing. I'll be serving different groups every day, different kids. But on weekends, we can be very different - in the winter I might do a lot of rock climbing training or take people to climb Lion Rock or Sunset Peak on Lantau Island. In the summer, I might do some river tracing or kayaking activities. So from Monday to Friday, I'm relatively fixed, but the weekends can vary a lot.

What do you love about your job?

 The reason I like my job the most is because I myself am a very active, lively person who loves outdoor activities and nature, and I also love to challenge myself. So I feel a great sense of happiness and fulfillment when I can experience nature in different ways, through rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, etc., and pass on this joy to others. 

What are some of the negative aspects of your work?

Of course, one of the biggest difficulties, just like other outdoor instructors, is that our working hours are very irregular, so sometimes we may be a bit slow in responding to customer inquiries, which may make them wonder if our service has gone downhill.

What's the situation? Many times we need to provide quotations or respond to inquiries, but we can only do so after completing our day's work or after working overnight for a few days. This often leads to us working overtime, and our response time for the service ends up being poor.

What training or expertise do you need to get into this type of work?

Well, first of all, you need to be a nature lover and enjoy outdoor activities, because you may have to spend over 200 days a year working in the wilderness. And after developing that personal interest, you'll need to obtain some professional qualifications, such as rock climbing instructor certifications from organizations like the Canadian and American mountaineering associations. I'm also working towards higher level mountain guide qualifications.

If you do more water activities, I'd also recommend getting relevant instructor certifications, like for kayaking. And to truly do a good job, in addition to the professional qualifications, you also need to find experienced mentors or companies in the industry to learn from - how to properly run and operate comprehensive outdoor activity programs and training camps.

What advice do you have for people starting out in this career?

Of course, as I mentioned, beyond just the certifications, you yourself need to have a strong passion for the outdoors. You should explore and challenge yourself through more personal adventures like mountaineering, wilderness activities, and kayaking trips. This will help you better understand how to handle unfamiliar environments, which will make you more effective at helping others grow through nature's challenges. And of course, those professional instructor certifications I mentioned earlier, like rock climbing, kayaking, and rope work, are absolutely essential as well.