Are there something like student mountain guides clubs in Western Europe?

Question

Student mountain guides clubs are very active in Poland. They are organizing non-commercial mountain backpacking trips, where participants have to pay only their part of costs, such as when you travel with the group of friends. So you don't have to travel alone if you don't have your team and don't want to participate in commercial trip.

Is something like that active in Western Europe, especially in Germany? The page about student guides clubs in Polish Wikipedia have no translations attached...

Answer 1

One place you can look is in an appropriate online hiking/mountain forums. For example, in CouchSurfing there's a group called mountain hiking. It has a subgroup called alpine enthusiasts. It looks like there are posts there of people trying to arrange hiking trips in the Alps, which would be a good place to find partners without knowing someone beforehand. Such a trip should definitely not be commercial in nature.

Another forum that might be useful is the Outdoors Adventure forum on TripAdvisor. It doesn't look like it has geographic-based sub forums, but it seems to have posts of the same kind.

Both CouchSurfing and TripAdvisor are commercial by nature, but I think the people posting in the forums are/have to be non commercial; I think pure "advertisements" there for paid services aren't welcome.

Answer 2

Most similar trips in Germany would be organized by the Deutscher Alpenverein or Naturfreunde who are organized in local chapters. These local chapters have youth groups that organize regular trips and also yearly big adventures. These trips will be very cheap and volunteer led.

You would have to find the chapter closest to you and ask them what trips they offer. Most advertise them on their website or print a magazine every few months.