Guiding careers

[cmor]

I thought there may be some knowledge out there on the subject:

Lately I've been thinking about going the route of proffessional guide. I'm currentlly a junior in college and will graduate next year with a degree in physics. But I also wanted to set my self up to gain my amga cert in ski mountaineering soon afterwards if I decided that was for me.

So the question is: How is the ski/mountaineering guiding job outlook? I'ver heard differing opinions from it being lucrative, to you will be homeless and starving.

Any thoughts? Maybe it would just be easier to go to grad school and get the decent paying job.

[Plakespear]

Well, I wouldn't say that the guiding business is lucrative, at least not in the sense that it will allow you to drive a Porsche and have a really big house (those people will be your clients). And you will probably experience being homeless and starving- while on the job. Guiding is ceratinly a tough business, and it takes a certain type of personality to do. You have to be calm when the shit hits the fan, because your clients are counting on you to get them out of difficult situations. Also, it takes years to establish yourself.

I don't know much about guiding, otherwise. But it seems like it has to be something you REALLY, REALLY want to do.

[joshbu]

Another couple data points:

1. Guiding is hard work. They get up stupid early to go over avy data, weather, and forming groups. Then, they spend a good part of the day smiling as they haul people out of tree wells, deal with minor sprains, dehydration, chills etc... then, they get to stay late after the clients leave to clean up.

2. Being a ski guide means you need a second job. Some teach avy awareness, guide rafting or climbing, fight fires, push paper, or whatever. For example, the season is only 3 or 4 months in Alaska. You will not make enough in 3 months to live the rest of the year. In fact, they almost don't make enough for just the 3 months they are there. Don't plan on having a fat 401-K.

3. You do get to be in the mountains every day, and, every once and a while, the clients don't fall, nothing breaks, and you do get a few minutes to just ski.

[cj001f]

For the first couple years as a ski guide, I'd say you'd be lucky to make as much as a graduate physics student w/a stipend. And you'd have far more personal ski time as a grad student.

If you pick the right grad school (near snow), and after that get a nice lab job(i.e lots of schedule flexibility) you could easily get in more than enough ski time.

[sluffhunter]

2 words=babysitting adults

[cmor]

I don't intend it to be a lifelong pursuit, but perhaps an interlude career before I send off to gradute stuff in geophysics. I thought it would be a good way to spend a few years working seasonally, making money on trips but not doing 9-5 everyday at a dishwashing job to support my habit. And I could spend my time in-between trips bagging peaks or something. Obviouslly its not the money route, but it would be a way to spend a block of time doing what I want before "settling down" (shudder). Is it feasible to "freelance" guide? I can deal without financial security for a few years. And I'm not looking to guide the himalayas. Just small time ski/mountaineering stuff. Even hiking/camping over summer, along with a simple normal job. Keep the life and death decisions to a minimum, leave them for my own exploits.

I dont wan't to look back from my desk job and wish I had at least skied a few 6000m peaks before I quit being a dirtbag hobo.