Re: [Paddlewise] Guiding lights: Was: how dangerous is kayaking?

>From: Bhansen97_at_aol.com
>Phillip - You write, RE: unsafe guided tours:
>
><< ....the sort of clients who can afford
>  guided tours (which ain't cheap) often come from the movers and shakers 
>of
>  society, and are accustomed to being able to overcome many obstacles by
>  issuing orders. I wonder if the bucks the clients are forking over, 
>combined
>  with the used-to-getting-their-way sorta folks....  >>
>
>Whoa man! Pretty heavy stuff there. I'm sorry you've been exposed to such a
>narrow segment of society. Some folks would say that shoot-from-the-hip
>categorizations like that are a good deal more elitist than are the folks 
>who
>go on guilded kayak tours. - Bill Hansen

Hi Bill,

I said "often" not "always", but you're right, it was a pretty sweeping 
generalisation. The point I was trying to make, perhaps a bit clumsily, was 
that the dynamic between guides and clients can be more like an 
employee-employer relationship than the dynamic between trip leaders and 
learners on club trips or of an experienced kayaker taking a friend on a 
tour.
Re "elitist": some (perhaps most) clients on extended kayak tours are in 
situations that are beyond their own personal skills in weather reading, 
route-finding, making judgement calls, campcraft, and so on; I don't think 
it's elitist to note that some folks are self-sufficient in these areas, and 
others are dependent on guides. If nobody was any better than anyone else at 
kayaking, the profession of sea-kayak guiding wouldn't exist.
Arguably, it's very prudent of kayak tour clients to recognise their own 
limitations in these particular areas, and to pay for professional guidance. 
However, this can create the situation I first remarked on, where the guides 
have conflicting priorities: their clients are depending on them to keep 
them out of harm's way, yet at the same time the clients may be exerting 
pressure (subtly or otherwise) to complete the entire advertised circuit, to 
"deliver" the suggested whale sightings, and to get them back on time, 
regardless of weather. Balancing all these requirements is part of being a 
truely professsional guide, I guess.
And yes, I have heard horror stories about unreasonable clients from guides 
(of course, human nature being what it is, we all love to talk more about 
the outrageous behaviour of a few than the decency of the vast majority).

>Ooooh - Should all of us who take guided tours be hanging our heads now?

Not at all. I'm guessing you use guided tours the way I would if I ever took 
one (which I well might if I was paddling in, say, tropical waters, an 
environment I am unfamiliar with): I imagine that far from being a passive 
passenger, you treat guided trips as an opportunity to learn all you can 
from experts with local knowledge, perhaps with an eye to applying that 
learning to your own trips later on. The fact that you're on Paddlewise 
shows that you have an ongoing passion for kayaking. This will not be true 
of all tour company clients; some will be kayaking this month, off trekking 
with another package tour next month, hot-air balloning the month after that 
and so on. And these "casual" clients are the ones who are most dependent on 
their guides. To say that is a factual observation; it is not a moral 
judgement, anymore than I would feel "judged" if someone observed that I 
needed a guide on a caving trip - I freely acknowledge I don't' have the 
skill set needed, but that hardly makes me a bad person.

Philip Torrens
N49°16' W123°06'


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