In this job you've got to be mobilely upward.

• Author: Slaughter, Powell
• Position: Guiding of mountain climbers

Burton Moomaw likes hanging out at the office. Most workdays you'll find him dangling from a cliff a few hundred feet off the ground, getting paid for what most people call adventure. He is a professional mountain guide, teaching climbing skills and leading clients up the faces of Linville Gorge, Looking Glass Rock, Stone Mountain and other western North Carolina crags.

Moomaw, based in Vilas, is a rarity in the Southeast, a climber who makes his living solely from guiding. There are fewer than 10 guide services in the state, and that includes summer camps and Outward Bound. Moomaw estimates that perhaps six people in North Carolina guide full time.

He's a rarity in another way. In 1996, he became the first guide in the Southeast certified by the American Mountain Guides Association, a Golden, Colo.-based group seeking to set professional standards. He's the only one. (Asheville guide Frank Carus, certified last year, joined the staff of International Mountain Climbing School in North Conway, N.H., in June.)

Climbing has long been a refuge for individualism and self-reliance, a way of life more than a way of making a living. To many climbers, certification smacks of regulation. "There's still a huge number of climbers who have a hard time viewing guiding as a profession," Moomaw says.

Moomaw, 39, began climbing when he took an Outward Bound course at Linville Gorge in 1980. He gained enough experience to return as an instructor in 1984. After three years, he bought a 50% share in Misty Mountain Threadworks Inc., a Valle Crucis-based climbing-harness manufacturer started by fellow instructor Woody Keen. Realizing corporate life wasn't for him, Moomaw sold his interest in 1989.

His former partner suggested he try guiding. Since 1992, Moomaw has logged at least 100 paying-client days every year. He purchased the name Appalachian Mountain Guides from a service that hadn't made a go of it. Its mistake? Too many employees, he says - four. North Carolina is not famous enough as a climbing destination to support a large guide service, he says. The Tetons in Wyoming, by contrast, have at least two companies with 10 to 20 guides.

Moomaw's first rule of business: "No employees, no problems." His other: "Don't be everything to everyone." That means avoiding large bookings. He usually takes one client at a time and never more than two or three. That gives him more control. Besides, "the real climbing experience is about the small ratio. A client can get...