Some Hard Mountain Truths About Guides And Clients

WRITTEN by CHRIS & ANNE ENSOLL

Every now and then we come across a piece of writing that expresses our own opinions so well, and does it much better than we could ourselves. So we’re doing something different for this post - we’re sharing our own brief thoughts on the subject and then pointing you to a post written by someone else.

Tracks on the Weismiess, Switzerland

When I meet clients for an adventure in the mountains, I ask them this question: “Who is primarily responsible for your safety today?” Very often they will point to me. They are surprised when I tell them that they are each responsible for their own safety. We all have a responsibility to ourselves and to the other people we’re with, and we all have to make good choices. Over that, my responsibility is to make an inherently dangerous activity as safe as is reasonably possible. I have been walking and climbing in the mountains for nearly fifty years and have never had a serious accident, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen to me. Over the years I have lost many good friends to mountain accidents, all of whom were strong, wise and experienced.

When someone hires a guide, the expectation can be for complete safety and/or guaranteed success. No guide can deliver these, in fact often our job is to make the decision to back off, even if we can’t always give a totally justifiable reason for the decision. Sometimes we just know that today is not the day. We collect information with our brains, eyes, feet, hands, skis, but we often make decisions in our guts, so we need to learn to listen to what is going on there.

Will Gadd is a Canadian mountain guide, speaker, and TV presenter. He has written an excellent blog post about this subject:

Dear Mountain Guests: Will Gadd Pens an Open Letter About Some Hard Mountain Truths