The road to becoming a guide

It has been a pleasure to watch as professional guides chime in with honest, detailed and very thought-full advice gleaned from years of guiding and running guiding business while other who haven't just make noise.

I left Virginia in '88 to continue my guiding career out west and haven't looked back once. The longer you stay, the longer this career is on hold!?

JLP- send me your resume and we'll talk about your potential:)

Heli ski guides in BC and Alps climb/ski guides make some of the best money, incl. tips is 600-1k/US/day for a 100 day season. As most folks do, I work a lot of hours for higher wages but it's doable.

I believe that only a negative mentality about this (or any other profession) keeps it from achieving high standards. Mountain guiding has a long history in the Alps and Canada where it is a highly trained and tested, very respected, and well paid profession. Most 'Merican guides could learn from these examples and make a decent living at this profession rather than live true to the stereotypes.

Im no guide; as has been pointed out by numerous individuals, my climbing abilities are good, but my social/interpersonal skills are quite limited. But,hey, if guideing is your dream, go for it! Life is about having no regrets. Besides, if it doesnt pan out you can always find work in the construction trades.

Josh Olson wrote:I can't move out west right now, my resume only has metalworking experience at one place on and off for the last 5 years, so getting work out there has been a struggle. Plus, I spent the last six months climbing in WI, making sure that it is what I want to do, so I have to rebuild my bank account for a car and yada yada yada...

I realize money and family and a million other things might prevent anyone from leaving home and going out west, but if I were dead serious about climbing or guiding I would leave Wisconsin sooner rather than later.

Garrett Soper wrote: I realize money and family and a million other things might prevent anyone from leaving home and going out west, but if I were dead serious about climbing or guiding I would leave Wisconsin sooner rather than later.

Oh, its definitely a sooner thing. One more year in Wisconsin at the most, leaving me at 22. I don't want to rush things and have to turn around with my tail between my legs, so I am making sure first times the charm.

Josh,

I think if you look at Eli's website........www.climbinglife.com you will get a pretty good idea of what you can do on your own as a guide.......Eli has done a better job than I at marketing himself and getting his full UIAGM pin. He's done a damn good job at creating a guiding business. And yes, I know plenty of guides, as does Eli, who do pull down six figures but they might not all work in the USA all the time. They might just go abroad where the wages are better and the respect for the profession greater. BTW Will S, my wife is a Spanish teacher of 20 years and I'm currently pulling in more money than her. But of course that is not always the case. As a guide you can make a pretty good living but ya gotta be motivated and hustle....

I might have been a bit hard on the AMGA part. It is a stepping stone and place to begin. But I would still stress working towards getting the UIAGM pin. Josh, PM me if you want any tips, suggestions etc.,

I've looked at Eli's website, actually it was a big turning point in realizing this wasn't some ludicrous dream. I know it isn't going to be easy, but most of the things worth doing aren't easy. First things first, I need to get out of Wisconsin. I'll be in contact with both of you two, Jack and Eli, to discuss some of the finer points.

Thanks again for all of your help. Definitely feeling encouraged, ready to start driving down that road.

jack roberts wrote:I've worked alongside many a guide who climbed 2 or 3 grades harder than me and many of them just did not have the patience, understanding desire etc to be the kind of guide I'd want to be tied into...

I'm not a guide currently but have worked in Experiential Education and guiding is something I've wanted to do for a long time. With that said, I think the greatest skill you can have as a guide or instructor is stated by Jack Roberts above. It has very little to do with how good of a climber you are, but how patient you are and how well you can explain to somebody else how to be a good climber. I do have the passion for teaching others. I don't really have a passion for climbing hard routes or pushing myself (in climbing), but I get the most satisfaction out of watching a friend or client overcome a plateau or obstacle.

I think that's the best advise I can give is don't be a guide because you love to climb, be a guide because you love to teach and share experiences.

having a trust fund helps

I like the idea of climbing for a handful of years, actually getting some experience and then deciding if you really want to be a guide.
You can take all the classes you want and get certifications out the ying yang, but that doesn't really mean squat if you don't have the time on the stone.

I've had more than one guide tell me that if I want to climb, don't become a guide. That's not to say it's impossible, but the good guiding gigs are harder and harder to come by these days.

Live somewhere decent, climb a lot and you'll probably find that you'd rather go climbing with your buddies than set up TRs for "never evers" day after day.

Josh Olson wrote:So I've started the road to becoming a guide, and I was looking for some personal experiences with being a guide, as well as the route that you took to get there. For right now I'm interviewing with a couple of gyms and gear shops to get the ball rolling, and I am leading finger cracks into the 10's and fists into 9's, as well as 9's on the faces. I try to get out as much as I can, but being three hours from climbing has put a damper on more than being a weekend warrior, hopefully moving in the coming month to get stronger. Any tips or advice or words of encouragement are greatly appreciated, especially from those with guiding experience.

as the old joke goes

whats the difference between a guide and a pizza?

A pizza can feed a family!

Talk to AMGA. If you move to the SE get a hold of Fox Mountain guides, if you move out west there is a plethora of guiding outfitters to choose from

jack roberts wrote:BTW Will S, my wife is a Spanish teacher of 20 years and I'm currently pulling in more money than her. But of course that is not always the case.

Jack, that is definitely not "always the case" that is rarely the case. This is akin to something like acting, pro-baseball, etc where there are about 2% who make decent money and the other 98% struggle to make rent. I also noticed that you said "currently" making more. How many years have you made more than a teacher's wage? How many years do you think you can continue to make more than teachers' wages? Do you account for the pension your teacher is building (guide's pension is to hope you get the chop before you get old)?. I'm just trying to give the young man a dose of reality.

High burnout rates, less interst in personal climbing, and beggar's wages are the rewards of this "glamorous" lifestyle.

JLP wrote: Oh man, that sounds incredibly stupid to me - 30k to be a min wage guide.

I make good money my friend and in half the time it would take me to make it in the states. It more then paid for itself for me, but I also pursued it to a different level. To each his own.

College ran around 100k for 4 years of my life, I don't make money from my college education, well I do a little on the side, but not like my guiding gigs,

Like I said, No Regrets, and the education was priceless, Sorry but you don't just learn that stuff from climbing with your buddies.

what does a mountain guide and a condom have in common?

Safer with , more pleasure without!

Will. You paint a pretty dire picture of being a guide............that does not have to be the case.

Let's see a teacher's salary(entry level) might begin at $32,000........Not that difficult to make that as a guide. If I continue on my current business plan I will continue to make well over what a teacher makes. The same 401 that is available to teachers is available to me so retirement should be pretty good. How many years can I continue making a good salary.
Well, the amount of work I get in this profession is more directly related to the effort I put into it. If I don't see much work coming in I guess I'm not working very hard.

Again, I think that in order to make a decent living as a guide one needs full UIAGM certification so that the ability to guide in Chamonix, Banff, Zermatt exists and by being self-employed you make a better living than by working for some of the bigger guide outfits. $750 dollars for a day of guiding is not a beggar's wage.

Sure, there are struggling guides who can't make rent and who can't pay for their share of the pizza they order but the same can be said for teachers and almost any other professional.

I don't want to belabor the point here Jack, but a defined-contribution 401k is in no way equivalent to a defined-benefit pension plan that a typical teacher or other public-sector employee builds. And for that matter, everyone I know that has a defined bene pension has 401k in addition, most with some form of company matching.

Sure, it doesn't have to be a dire situation. And your rec is solid, full UIAGM is the surest path to decent income and variety of work if you're going the guiding route. But again, what percent of US guides are full UIAGM certified? My guess would be ~2% or less. And what would it cost to reach that cert? $30k? $40k?

You can't unring the bell, and when someone is making career choices at a young age, I think it does them a serious disservice to not layout all the downsides, especially to something perceived by the general public or enthusiasts as some romantic occupation. For the OP, who wouldn't be entering a white collar profession, it's less critical. Trade professions take a different view on work history and if he burns out or decides he want to switch back to metal work it's an easier transition than someone in law, medicine, engineering, etc where firms wouldn't even give you a second look because there are 50 other resumes on the desk from people who've gained more experience and shown a dedication to the profession while you were out short-roping n00bs up a snowfield or toproping the same 5.6s all weekend.

I have nothing to add except that its quite easy to burn 100k on out of state tuition at CU(thank god I'm instate), and get a fluff degree. Most of the girls on the hill every weekend night spend 100k to find a husband...

JLP wrote: Lastly, we really need more detail on this 100k college degree that didn't do you any good. That's a big throw-down in this thread and needs to be cleared up. First - really solid planning and decision making there, for sure, to go through that kind of expense and throw it away. Second - 100k is Harvard kind of money - out of state tuition rates with zero financial aid, to say the least. Did you go to Harvard? Have you paid off these loans yet? Did your family make so much money you didn't get any financial aid? What was the degree in? How much of that 100k was actually tuition, and how much was gas, beer and rent - or student loans financing a climber's lifestyle? Also - to the OP - check salary.com sometime for slightly inflated #'s on your other options. Compare.

Before you continue your pontificating, at least get your facts straight. Sadly, 100K is not even close to the cost of an education at most of the high end liberal arts colleges and Ivy league-caliber institutions.

Also, consider that not everyone shares the same set of priorities. Perhaps some of us are simply not that concerned with making enormous amounts of money...

JLP,

registrar.colostate.edu/stu…
that is a link to Colorado state tuition today for an out of state resident. I was out of state there for my first two years.

almost 12k a semester these days for 15 credits, Lets see I think 128 or so to graduate? so at 32 credits a year for 4 years? Well, I can't do that kind of math anymore, it makes my head hurt.

Lets guess around 7500-10k a year to rent a room with utilities in this day and age? Still have not bought books, paid for gas and other expenses in life, not to mention food and other supplies. It adds up quickly unless you are talking about attending CMC and calling it good.

Most kids take 5 years to finish school now a days too, because they have to work there ass off to pay for it and have to stretch it out. I did it in 4 years, but with 1 year off. And in that year I realized school was in the way. That last year I pulled off 48 credits in 1 year, Straight A's and B's, 24 credits in a semester, back to back because I wanted out so bad so I could start my life. Kind of proved to myself that it really was just a bunch of hoops that society expects you to go through.

Why not this approach? You always here the argument, go to school so you have something to fall back on? Well, how about the other way around, School will always be there, so go have fun, travel , find out what makes you happy, where you might want to live, explore culture, do the things that are lessons for life that you can't learn in school. What about apprenticing or bottom of the totem pole experience in field you are interested in to see if you really want to do it before you invest four years of your life to study it. At 18, kids are just finishing high school, and running off to College with out a clue of whats out there.

My 2 cents on the matter.

JLP you are so pro education, so why discourage the OP, he seems passionate about exploring an avenue of education.

My Guide training and real life guiding did not make me stronger in the mountains, but it did however make me smarter in the mountains. By being smarter I got stronger.

As for salaries and wages,

Jack brings up some good points here, As in any profession, if you want to make more you need to work harder.

Guides in France right now are pulling between 5-6k a month pretty easily in Euros during the peak seasons. Its not hard to do and its not that hard to find the work if you are in Europe. 5-6k a month with the exchange rate today is about 7k-8.5k in dollars. No the work is not always steady, but in the high seasons you can count on it. Its still possible to work in the slower months depending on how bad you market and sell what you offer. So with a UIAGM ticket you can go over, grab some euros and see a nice return.

Mind you this calculation comes mostly from day rate work and or bureau , concessions. When you book your own work or lets say ski tours at high ratios 4-1 is my limit, but many around here will do 6-8 depending on the itineraries, or any type of expedition work, then you can really up that number. How hard do you want to work and how bad do you want it as in any job or trade.

I have a Swedish Guide Friend here in La Grave that Guided La Meije twice in the last 10 days. Both routes were onsight for him on the North side, 1-1 client: guide ratio. 1400 euros a pop, That's the price to guide La Meije for 1 person, and it sells quite a bit.

I pay about 170 Euros for my liability insurance over here for about 6 months as well. It carries 5 million euro in liability too. I don't even think it is possible to buy that much coverage for guiding in the states, let alone at that price.

For those who have not been to the Alps and seen what the guiding profession looks like over here, well it's hard to explain or compare to anything in the US. It is a respected profession and it's not easy to become a guide. So unless you are after that , then I don't know why someone would go down a UIAGM track unless you are just after education.

There are quite a bit of scholarships available these days for AMGA training as well, Not to mention some colleges have started reckognizing courses for college credit. Every year there are more and more scholarships available thanks to many of the outdoor industry companies stepping up.

JLP the AMGA is not getting rich on providing courses and exams. The instructors don't get paid anything close to the European wage either, and in my opinion don't really get paid what they should be getting.

What the AMGA has done is given Americans the opportunity to pursue the profession at the highest standard so that the few dedicated hard workers can achieve UIAGM certification as a means to work in Canada, and Europe where the profession is paid well and very active.

Here is just a small example of the return on my investment (just some of the perks)

-traveled to about 15 different states for work and about 15 different countries, In most cases paid travel expenses as well.

-I have gotten to onsight guide easily 100's and 100's of ski descents and climbing routes while getting paid.

-I have probably skied about 200'000 dollars worth of heli runs and been paid to ski them to.

-I have not paid for a lift ticket in La Grave France for the past 9 seasons and have only had to pay for about 10% of my skiing in Europe as a whole in the last 10 years. ( even if I never guide again, My UIAGA investment will pay for itself with lift tickets in Europe)

Those are just some highlights, It's all relative to what you value personally. A house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

As for retirement, or 40lk Well I might get attacked by some for saying this, I am going ex-pat, well sorta, somewhere in between. In 5 years I will have the option to surrender if I decide to go down that road.

I received my carte de se Jour, I now have French Equivalance for my Guide Diploma, I will have Carte Professionale soon as well, but the big move was stepping into URSAFF which is the French system. I now pay my income tax over there. What do I get with that, Well, I am covered for loss of wages if I get hurt and I don't need extra insurance for that I can buy more if I want higher coverage, I have health care that doesn't have 5k of expenses out of pocket with some retarded 3k deductible or 80/20 co pay, so I am now saving around 2k a year in Health insurance premiums. I have 1500 euros a year I can get back from the government to be used for continuing education, I have a small pension.

So here is an example of maybe an extreme road or a large commitment to what the UIAGM path can do for someone or what it did for me!

Not every mountain guide struggles to buy pizza, lives in the dirt and hates their job. I guess like all things , how bad do you want it.

Seems so many of my clients always say, wow I wish I had your job at the end of a day or a trip, but I can't remember the last time I went into an office cubicle and saw my buddy working 5 days a week in the same routine waiting for his next vacation all while pulling in his 6 figures a year and driving a nice car etc, and saying to him, Wow, " I really wish I had your job. "

Sorry for the long post, but it just rubs me a bit when people just want to bash on a chosen profession they just don't agree with, or might just not know enough about.

To the OP, do what makes you happy, Try it all if you can, Best advice is to choose where you want to live first and then find work second, If you don't like what your doing or where your working, Change it quickly or quit, Life is too short to drag out not being happy. School will always be there to fall back on!