Re: [Paddlewise] Guiding lights: Was: how dangerous iskayaking?

Philip Torrens wrote:

> 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.

I had a very brief tenure in the late '70's as a mountain guide (three
summers), working for guy who ran people around and up/down Mount Adams, a
heavily glaciated stratovolcano in Washington.  A story to illustrate why I
would never consider guiding anybody anywhere again:

Guy in his late 30's to early 40's, out of shape, clearly did not train
for the eight-day session like our literature said he needed to.  He goes
anyway, and we baby him from rock to rock on glacial moraines, noting that he
is frequently out of breath.  On the seventh day, on the way to high camp, he
has to flop on the glacier many times, and begins to exhibit low-level
Cheyne-Stokes breathing (we think).  At high camp he can not get his breathing
rate down.  Chuck (the leader) and I (number two) decide "no way this guy is
going to the summit tomorrow."  We tell him that, and he seems to accept it
with aplomb, while breathing heavily at 8300 feet (summit is 12700).  Group
summits, returns to basecamp for the obligatory barbecue/beer bash.  Guy gets
kinda looped (not breathing heavily anymore) and lays into Chuck and me (and
the director of the climbing school), saying,  "I was cheated and mislead -- I
had as much right to go to the summit as anybody ..."  Much bad vibes.  This
guy is an EMT, so he goes back to NY and reads up on pulmonary edema, etc., and
sends us a letter a month later apologizing and thanking us for (maybe) saving
his life by keeping him from going up the mountain.

I was going to lay another story on the throng, but it began to trigger an
avalanche of anecdotes like the one above and I decided I did not want to think
about that stuff any more.  Nothing but respect for folks who can guide
successfully.

You got it, Philip:  "... the dynamic ... [is] like an employee-employer
relationship ..."  except that sometimes the "employer" does not know squat
about how the "employee" should do his job.

For the record, I was a client on a guided sea kayak trip out of Loreto, Baja
CA, in 1986, and it was **heaven** to have someone else do all the worrying! 
I'd be a client again in a flash if I had the bucks.  (Don't, unfortunately,
'cause I'm having a house built -- occupiable in 6 weeks!)

-- 
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR


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