I have come to believe the odds of going guided are often stacked against you — especially when it comes to matching skill and experience level among participants. My opinion comes from three guided adventures in the past two years, finding it to be a 50/50 experience so far, based solely on luck:
- Pico de Orizaba and Iztaccíhuatl with Servimont — a pre-organized group from home
- Denali Prep with Alaska Mountaineering School— an individual signup with very little assessment
- Aconcagua with Inka Expeditiones — also as an individual participant, with no real screening
Not counting my experience in Mexico — since that group had registered together — I lost big in Alaska but got lucky in Argentina. The aha moment came during those fifteen days with our guides from Inka.
Front Office = Sales
I now see that the front office of a guide company is nothing more than sales. Their main goal is to fill spots — plain and simple. Who fills those spots hardly matters. There doesn’t seem to be much of a “placement” process or any real effort to match skills and experience among the adventure-seekers who ultimately end up as a team.
Based on my outcomes, I would much rather be presented with alternate dates that group together climbers of similar ability. Otherwise, it’s just a roll of the dice, hoping for the odds to fall in your favor.
Back Office = Operations
That leaves the back office crew as operations — the guides on the mountain who now have to deliver on the expectations sold by those in their front office. Unfortunately, these guides often have no idea who they’ll be leading until the day everyone shows up. From that point on, they’re doing backflips all day long to make it all work for the poorly screened band of misfit mountaineers they’ve been handed.
These guides are truly remarkable individuals, with an impressive range of abilities — from hard technical expertise to the soft people skills that hold a team together in very challenging conditions.
Who Pays the Price
So then, who really pays the price for how this game gets played? The guides do, in part, since they have to deal with whatever shortcomings are thrown their way. But that’s the kind of job a professional guide signs up for, and they’re compensated to manage such scenarios.
However, I think the more consequential price is paid by the clients — the ones who are sold one thing and then might not get the best possible experience because underqualified participants are accepted.
As mentioned earlier, my Denali Prep experience fell far short of the expectations set by the Alaska Mountaineering School sales team, while I couldn’t have asked for a better group to climb Aconcagua with. I think it’ll always be a gamble when you go guided as an individual. So perhaps the best solution is to organize your own group and sign up together for the trip — just like I did with Orizaba and Izta.
