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Alaska’s First Female Heli-Ski Guide, Pilot Duo Hopes More Women Will Follow Their Lead

POM Administrator — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 08:00:55 +0000

“You might have to work harder as a female,” Lel Tone replies when asked about barriers she’s faced over her career as ski patroller, avalanche forecaster, and heli-ski guide, “but I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. It’s just motivation to be better than everyone else.”

Soft spoken and perpetually upbeat, Tone was one of Alaska’s first female heli-ski guides, leading her first clients 24 years ago. However, until this winter, she had never flown with a female pilot.

Lel Tone has been a heli guide for nearly a quarter of a century, but she’s only recently had a fellow woman in the pilot seat. (Photo: Wes Wylie)

“I know a handful of female guides like Kim Grant at Points North and Kristen Kremer at Valdez, but never, in the history of ever, have I flown with a lady pilot,” said Tone, “and you can feel the difference.”

Tone grew up in Switzerland with parents who took her skiing for the first time at the age of two. “They bought plastic skis from the grocery store and strapped them to my winter boots,” said Tone, with a smile, “then we went on a family ski trip to Austria.”

Being exposed to skiing at a young age helped Tone develop a comfort in the mountains, which led her to where she is today. After graduating high school she took a job ski patrolling at , a resort in Maine. “Even as a teenager I knew how important nature was in my life. I’ve spent a lifetime working towards being outside as much as I can.”

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After college, Tone moved to Lake Tahoe and was hired as a ski patroller at Palisades Tahoe. With a medical background and desire to help people, she was drawn to snow science. “It felt like the practical next step. My first year I started cutting my teeth in avalanche education and forecasting.”

In 1999, Tone took a job in Alaska as the medical coordinator for Points North Heli-��ԹϺ��s, but soon started guiding clients in the Chugach. “They were short staffed so I was thrown into the fire. I was scared shitless, but I knew my job was to keep people safe.”

Since then, Tone has guided Warren Miller film crews, competed in extreme ski comps, and co-founded , a series of women’s avalanche safety clinics, all while patrolling at Palisades and heli-ski guiding in Alaska for two months each season. With her résumé, Tone is the type of person you should be intimidated by, but that’ll never happen, because she’s so friendly.

Tordrillo Mountain Lodge heli pilot Kimber Warder brings the bird in for a pick up. (Photo: Andy Cochrane)

“Lel is a complete badass, one of the best guides we have,” says Meghan Hansmeyer, the Lodge Manager at , where Tone works in March and April, “but she’s all about you. She’s the ultimate hype woman; she brings out the best in everyone. She doesn’t care how steep the line is or who skis first—and she even makes time to help with dishes at the lodge at night.”

Heli-skiing is one of the most macho and masculine corners of the ski industry, but Lel goes about her job in a unique way. “She always encourages questions from quests,” says Hansmeyer, “and takes time to get to know everyone in a real way. She makes the experience fun for everyone.”

When asked about her leadership style, Tone hedges, saying that she always starts with listening. “I often get told I’m a mama bear,” says Tone, who has built a career with a nurturing mentality. “I try to recognize when guests feel a little uncomfortable or scared shitless and I help them work through it.”

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While she has never run up against blatant discrimination, Tone concedes, “there are no shortcuts for women. You can’t just be middle of the road as a female. It doesn’t matter who you know or where you went to school, you just have to be really good at your game. If you can prove yourself to your peers, you’ll rise through the ranks. I embraced that wholeheartedly from the start.”

The rare overt sexism Tone has experienced came from guests. “Occasionally I meet new clients at the landing pad who look at me differently,” says Tone, who at 5’2” doesn’t look like your typical heli-ski guide. “When that happens, I just want to prove them wrong. After a few runs it’s always gone.”

Although heli-ski guiding appears individual from the outside, Tone thinks collaboration is the most important part of the job. “As a guide, I have systems that set me up for success. They save my ass. Pilots have their systems, too,” says Tone. “So it’s a collaborative effort and you have to compromise.”

Skiers scout possible lines out the heli window in Tordrillo’s 1.2 million acres of terrain. (Photo: Andy Cochrane)

After a quarter-century of guiding, Tone says she can quickly spot the small differences between pilots, but this year a big difference stood out. “My heart swelled the first time I saw my pilot was a chick,” says Tone. “I’ve never been one to scream from the mountain tops, but I do wish there were more women in our field. It’s just a different vibe flying with a lady.”

Growing up on Whidbey Island just north of Seattle, Kimber Warder started dreaming of flying as a kid. “I wanted to be a commercial airline pilot when I was young and I never doubted that dream. What I love is that it keeps you in the moment. It can be stressful in bad weather, but it’s so much fun to fly.”

Warner got her helicopter license 19 years ago and started her career with firefighting and construction work across the country. “It was all over the map. East Coast, Florida, Mexico, Colorado, California, and now Alaska,” says Warder, who likes traveling to new places, but cares more about who she works with.

“It’s been an absolute pleasure working with Lel,” says Warder. “She’s always in a good mood. She takes her time with guests and truly gets to know them. Communication is key with any job but especially in a pilot-guide combination, and Lel is so easy to work with.”

Despite a calm and quiet exterior, Warder approaches her work meticulously. “I do a lot of research and am cautious with weather, fuel, and risks in general,” says Warner. “There are so many more risk factors in Alaska. My main goal is to get everyone back. I want to do this all the time, not just today.”

Warder always wanted to fly. She got her first heli-ski pilot gig 10 years ago. (Photo: Andy Cochrane)

Warner is always trying to learn from the guides she works with. “The best part of heli-skiing is that there is no formula. Every dropoff and pickup is different, so you’re always learning,” says Warder. “Every guide does it a little differently, so you have to communicate. I try to be direct with what I need and ask them what they want, too.”

After more than a decade of experience, Warder got her first job at a heli-ski lodge in Utah six years ago. Then, after working in Idaho for four seasons, she moved to Alaska last year. “The mountains in Alaska are unlike anything else. They create some unique challenges, too,” says Warder.

Like Tone, Warder has experienced sexism in her career, but tries not to focus on it. “That’s the world we live in, so I just show up and do my best job,” she says. “If a guy pilot says something and I say something else, they’ll take his word. That’s the inherent bias, but it can’t bug you all the time or you’ll be upset all the time. I want to be a positive person, so I’ve learned how to move on.”

Together, Tone and Warder create a unique energy in the mountains. “Kimber has a light and warm personality and is very professional,” says Hansmeyer. “Like Lel, she knows how to make people feel safe. We have a lot of guests who have never been heli skiing before and these two make it comfortable for everybody, whether they have hundreds of days or they are just a beginner.”

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Nepal Passed New Rules for Climbing Everest. Not Everyone Is Happy.

jstern — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:28:36 +0000

It’s been a frustrating month for mountaineering guides who lead expeditions on Mount Everest. The laws governing climbers on the peak’s Nepali side have changed several times, leaving guides confused, anxious, and glued to the Internet awaiting future updates.

“It’s Nepal and nobody knows how the new regulations will be interpreted, implemented, and finally enforced,” said Austrian guide Lukas Furtenbach, the owner of Furtenbach ��ԹϺ��s, who leads Everest expeditions in Nepal.

The situation began on February 8 when the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality, the governing body that, among other things, oversees the rules and regulations of Nepal’s Everest Base Camp (EBC), said that for 2024 and beyond, climbers would be required to haul their feces off of the peak and down to Base Camp via plastic WAG bags. Then, on February 14, officials with the agency released even more stringent guidelines. These rules regulated the size of square and dome tents, curtailed the use of helicopters to ferry gear to camp, prevented visitors and trekkers from sleeping in camp, and required every climber to carry down at least eight kilograms (17.6 pounds) of garbage from the mountain, among other things.

The document was laden with typos and logical holes, and some of the strict regulations on the size of tents and the helicopter transport left guides scratching their heads. Furtenbach told me that because of the statute’s vague text on tent size limitations, guides would likely just have to bring more, smaller tents. “We might see a Base Camp this year with more tents than ever because of the new regulations,” he said.

But Nepali officials weren’t finished, and February 28, they said that all climbers on Everest would be required to wear a tracking chip. Then, a week later on March 8, the governing body completely revised the rules issued on February 14, and the revisions all-but reneged on some of the rules.

“False alarm. Once again. Nepalese routine,” said Furtenbach.

When we corresponded on February 29, Furtenbach told me that Nepali officials hadn’t reached out to him or other Western operators about the new regulations—like everyone else, he had read about them online. There were several regulations that Furtenbach said did not pass his sniff test.

Among these initial strictures was a rule that forbade the use of helicopters to ferry gear to and from EBC. Instead, all tents, climbing gear, and personnel would need to be transported solely by yaks. The rule’s intention was to not only preserve nature and reduce helicopter traffic in the region, but to bolster the fading cultural practice and industry of yak herding. But Furtenbach told me that there simply aren’t enough yaks in the region to handle all of the gear.

“If this regulation is not relaxed, we will see chaos—teams not getting gear, food, and oxygen to the mountain in time,” he said. The timing of the announcement, just six weeks before the season begins, represented a major curveball for Furtenbach and other operators.

Luckily for them, the revised ruleset gives some leeway to chopper access. After the latest revision, some operators will be able to carry some logistical equipment to and from Base Camp via helicopter, but the process will be subject to a monitoring committee’s approval. However, according to the Himalayan Times, the municipality that yaks and local porters “should still be utilized for transporting climbing gear under normal circumstances.”

Regulations on tents became another point of contention when the municipality originally outlawed dining tents larger than ten square feet per person. Guides complained that this regulation essentially outlawed the tents used for mealtime and meetings. “This is an error and not practical—it barely accommodates one chair,” Dawa Steven Sherpa, a conservationist and the CEO of Asian Trekking told . This restriction has now been eased to 60 square feet for the dining tents and 80 square per person feet for sleeping quarters. While the regulations on dome tents were meant to curb luxury at EBC, the effect was negligible on big operators. “With those calculations in mind, you can use a large dome tent when you have enough members in your team,” said Furtenbach.

A no-visitor policy that would have required medical staff to purchase a separate climbing permit was also eased for guiding operations, but will remain in place for trekkers and general EBC visitors. Friends and family of climbers will now also be allowed to stay at Base Camp.

Another point of confusion was the implementation of “tracking chips,” which, in fact, are nothing more than Recco reflectors. These reflectors are often used in avalanche incidents for body recovery, as they require a bulky detector that is often carried via helicopter. “Ground-based Recco searches are not often possible, and on Everest most rescue and recovery missions are above 7,000 meters (23,000 feet), where helicopters never fly,” said Furtenbach.

Furtenbach said his company has tested all manner of sensors, trackers, and even vital-sign monitors on Everest and says each one comes with its limitations, but none so much as Recco. Most climbers on Everest who get lost do so on the summit ridge, far beyond the possibility of a Recco-guided recovery. “A better solution to the problem of climbers getting lost on the mountain would be that their guides do not leave them alone,” he says.

These new rules aren’t coming out of a vacuum. Last year tied the deadliest year on record on the world’s highest peak. “The new [Recco] rule is in response to rising casualties on Everest,” Rakesh Gurung, director at the Department of Tourism The Khumbu Glacier, on which EBC sits is Clearly something has got to give. But with Everest season just a few weeks away, and these rules far from being set in stone, I don’t envy operators trying to suss out planning a group expedition.

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The Future of Rock Climbing Instruction May Be on Instagram

POM Administrator — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 12:15:59 +0000

Earlier this year, a popular guide and social media personality, @alpinetothemax, uploaded a video to Instagram. It showed a climber on the First Flatiron, above Boulder, Colorado, reeling in rope as he belayed a follower, who was off screen, through a single redirected piece. Apart from a frowning-face emoji censoring the belayer’s face, the shot didn’t seem out of place among the thousands of other “tech tip” videos populating climbing social media. “This post is not meant to dox this individual, but to provide an example for others to see their own blind spots,” part of the caption read. “Keep it constructive and productive.” Then the comments section exploded.

One user wrote that, “If you really care about their safety (and really felt that it was at risk), wouldn’t you have intervened in the moment rather than posted a secret video?” Another climber posted: “When I started climbing I was called out by a guide after an AMGA class for giving a bad belay. I nearly quit climbing on the spot because I was so humiliated… The fact that you made this so public is a really low blow. If you cannot give feedback to the person’s face, don’t post it.”

@alpinetothemax, whose real name is Max Lurie, is a 36-year-old guide based in Boulder. Over a decade or so of guiding, Lurie’s Instagram following has swollen to 85,000 followers, most of whom have gravitated towards his tech tip posts. Lurie is one of many American guides who have begun posting climbing tips to their social media pages.

“It’s a hard industry to make a living in,” Lurie told me of guiding, over the phone. Posting such content “does bring the clients in,” he acknowledges, “but that’s not the only reason I do it. It’s just a way of giving back to our community. But then, that’s where the good things stop. With posting come all the problems of social media.” Including, he says, getting into hot water for posting a video using recreational climbers as an example of what not to do. “I got kind of crucified for that one.”

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Lurie’s post and its fallout may be a telling waypoint in a larger shift in which climbing is taught—at least partially—on a screen instead of a cliff. Historically, climbers cut their teeth in a dangerous sport with the help of guides or mentors or a select set of instruction books, like John Long’s “Climbing Anchors” or the perennially updated “Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills.” Now, a new climber can follow, scroll, and like their way towards proficiency. Online, a seemingly limitless amount of information awaits.

The shift poses a set of questions important for our sport: Can aspects of climbing be taught online? Who gets to post, and why? How do new (and old) climbers sort through the wealth of content in order to tell the difference between the hacks and the experts?

Online learning levels the playing field, giving those who face social or financial barriers access to knowledge once passed from person-to-person. “The landscape’s really changed. [A guide’s] reach is now much further,” says Dale Remsberg, a 51-year-old IFMGA guide based in Lafayette, Colorado. Such content should be taken with a grain of salt though. “The responsibility lies on the person seeking out what to learn and how to learn,” notes Silas Rossi, an IFMGA guide who has started the Ascend Membership, an online mentorship program designed to augment in-person learning. Climbing is “very unforgiving, and it’s really hard for people to understand how much risk they’re assuming when they are just starting to understand what risks are really involved,” he points out. And there’s an added danger in misapplying a technique taken from a short video. “The risk is somebody that doesn’t know much about climbing uses all of your content and they misapply the technique and get killed. So, that’s scary,” Remsberg says. “It’s totally a recipe for disaster,” Lurie cautions.

An increased number of gyms means that climbers with the ability to climb difficult grades may never venture outside. And those with the strength to do so have very little knowledge of ropework and belaying. This rise in physical standards has quickly outpaced traditional methods of how climbers learn, sometimes with disastrous results. “Here in the Gunks we have an average of one death per year, and it’s not infrequently a new climber leading, or learning to climb with friends,” Rossi notes.

Jeff Yoo, an ER doctor as well as an experienced boulderer and sport climber, has noticed that “there’s such an influx of new climbers; [but] there’s not as many mentors around. And I think that’s a big issue in the outdoor climbing space we haven’t really solved.” This summer, Yoo, who has repointed multiple 5.13b’s and bouldered V12, began traditional climbing, a shift in disciplines he admits sent him into cognitive overload. “I made so many mistakes in my first days,” he recalls. Attempting the Oracle, a traditional route in Squamish that “could potentially become R- or X-rated” during an onsight lead like Yoo’s, according to MountainProject, Yoo took and weighted his third piece sideways, which failed and zippered out his lower protection. He hit his belayer before hitting the ground. Both were OK, and Yoo posted a video of the fall on his Instagram page. Looking back, Yoo realizes it was his assessment of risk, not his strength, that was unreliable: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

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Yoo doesn’t think that “online tech tips could ever replace the real life experience of actually placing protection and climbing above it. But it’s clear that more and more climbers are partially—or wholly—substituting in-person guiding or mentorship with some kind of online content.

All this begs a few questions: what are the safest and best ways for instructors to provide online learning, and what are the safest and best ways for climbers to use this new kind of information?

Everyone I spoke to for this article stresses that responsibility still falls on the user. “The thing I tell my students is to be skeptical,” Lurie mentions. “Don’t just take any information at face value.” Marc Chauvin, the former president of the AMGA and author, with Rob Coppolillo, of The Mountain Guide Manual, recommends paying for online subscription services to buy into a progression of learning, in addition to following tech tips from free Instagram handles. Remsberg cautions that “you can only learn so much online.”

But anyone can post content; for a new climber, it’s hard to decipher who is an expert and who isn’t, and how to filter through and apply complicated techniques. “There’s no oversight,” Lurie notes. Remsberg has noticed that “some of the pro climbers trying to increase their following are posting their own tech tips and some of them are wrong and flat-out dangerous.”

While niche techniques, like belaying a follower with a Mini Traxion, or simul rappelling might garner more clicks, oohs, and aahs than basic fundamentals, these nuanced practices are hard to boil down into thirty-second Instagram clips and can easily be misapplied with disastrous results.

Sean Sarkar, a climber with two years of ice climbing and a year of trad leading under his belt, who has used tech tips, subscription-based learning, and in-person guiding to progress, tries to ask the question: “Is this something different than I’ve seen before but is totally safe, or is this something that’s actually dangerous?”

For guides, especially in the United States, Instagram helps to augment wages, appease sponsors, and generate interest in a business. In the U.S., guides are typically paid less than their European counterparts, and work is more sporadic. “In [European] culture it’s very common to hire guides,” Remsberg points out. “Those guides always had a steady stream of work. They haven’t had to market themselves. I’ve had to be hungrier and figure out ways to gain clients and make money.” And where new techniques were once driven from outside learning, or from hard-earned information gleaned from accidents, there’s a potential they’re now being created to feed and maintain a social media presence, that some influencers are reinventing wheels just to remain relevant in a growing cottage industry. But the more unique the tech tip, the less applicable it may be.

To counter this, Rossi recommends paying attention to the fundamentals—even if they’re boring—and building good habits early. If you spend money on guiding and instruction (and there are plenty of climbers who never will), try to invest early in order to build solid foundational habits that will accompany you for the remainder of your climbing career.

Eva Capozzola instructs Camille Santiago the finer points of rope ascension during the Arc’teryx High Angle Photography Clinic in Lake Louise, Alberta. (Photo: Bea Dres)

So far, the new frontier of online instruction seems to have policed itself. “Within the guiding community there’s pressure,” Lurie says. “These people who have a big social media presence? They’re putting themselves out there. They know their colleagues will be watching, so there’s professional pressure.” Lurie mentions his reputation now precedes him at crags, which forces him to be sharper with his systems in his everyday guiding.

Even if education is the motive, the newfound ability for guides to film recreational climbers making errors or using outdated techniques should raise questions within the profession. Some level of knowledge is necessary in a deadly pastime. But on the other hand, so is learning from your own mistakes. There’s undeniable value in learning from others’ errors. Airline pilots in training review cockpit recordings of doomed planes to scour what went wrong; militaries implement after-action reviews to quickly absorb lessons from mistakes made in the field. None of these occur on such a public platform, however.

Finding the balance between education and shaming remains essential for climbing, and finding constructive ways to impart the knowledge should be paramount within the guiding community. “We definitely had a strong shaming vibe,” Rossi notes of climbing culture’s old-school education aesthetic.

It’s not difficult to imagine a future where the AMGA implements stricter guidelines for its members who post tech tips, cautionary videos, and information online, or extends their code of conduct to further encompass the internet, where so many beginners are now turning for information. Until then, perhaps it’s best to give weight—just this once—to a comment posted on the internet: “I would suggest following the rule in river sports to always post positive—showing the best way to do something is the most effective teaching tool.”

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Ed Viesturs Does Not Care About Your Guided 8,000er Speed Record

jstern — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 20:22:38 +0000

The tumultuous 2023 Himalayan climbing season was marked by both triumph and tragedy. More climbers than ever set out for Mount Everest’s summit, and 17 died on the mountain, the most ever in a season. Record-chasing climbers smashed historic marks on the 14 8,000-meter peaks. But the race to bag summits also to deadly disasters. And the history books documenting the achievements on these mountains were also upended. New methods for scrutinizing historic climbs prompted Guinness World Records to strip some of the sport’s greatest athletes—specifically Italian climber Reinhold Messner—of their past achievements.

The whole series of events did not sit well with Ed Viesturs, the legendary alpinist who in 2005 became the first American to ascend the 8,000-meter peaks without using supplemental oxygen. I spoke to Viesturs, 64, in October about the state of Himalayan climbing, and whether or not he believes Messner’s record should still stand.

Viesturs, shown here in 2014, is no fan of the guided speed records on Himalayan peaks. (Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images)

Viesturs told me he does not take the Guinness decision seriously. “The list, as I always saw it, named me the fifth person to climb every 8,000er without oxygen, ” Viesturs said. “I didn’t care if I was first or fifth or tenth but somehow recently the four people ahead of me were taken off the list through analysis or scrutiny and I got pushed to number one. Did It change my life? No. But someone’s keeping track.”

The crowds on Everest and the uptick in record chasing are tied to the same sea change in Himalayan climbing. The rapid increase in guiding companies in the Himalayas means it’s easier and cheaper than ever to ascend Everest and other peaks. Some companies will guide novice climbers up routes that, decades ago, were the playground for the most seasoned climbers. Other guiding companies specifically cater to record-chasing climbers hoping to bag all of the 8,000ers.

Viesturs is not impressed with these records. “The media and general public love this type of speed event. It’s fast, and seemingly innovative. It attracts lots of attention. But this style of climbing takes logistics, manpower to fix ropes, and lots of money,” he says. “Not skill.”

Plus, the race to bag these peaks causes dangerous situations. On October 7, American climber Anna Gutu and her guide Mingma Sherpa died in an avalanche on 26,335-foot Shishapangma. Then, less than an hour later, Nepali guide Tenjen Lama Sherpa and his client, another American climber, Gina Marie Rzucidlo, died when a separate avalanche buried them higher on the peak. Both women died attempting to become the first American woman to climb all the 8,000ers and were racing each other for the title.

Viesturs believes the demand to score speed records is one of the biggest problems in Himalayan climbing right now. “The highest peaks in the world will always attract people,” Viesturs says. “With the high demand, outfitters are supplying the resources. Some outfitters are well organized and trained, others perhaps not so much.”

Viesturs doesn’t blame the guides, but rather argues that the incentives to get clients to the top may persuade them to take unnecessary risks. Some guides feel extreme pressures to get their highest-paying clients to the summit. “The pressure of that investment and expectation causes the guides to continue pushing clients to the summit who perhaps should have been turned around much earlier, due to lack of endurance or skill,” Viesturs said. That, combined with what he describes as a group-think mentality, likely contributed to the high death toll on Everest.

Once acclimatized, many disparate guided parties at Everest Base Camp anxiously await a good weather report. When guides are given the green light on a weather window, no one wants to be left behind—a dynamic that creates bottlenecks and traffic jams on the route. “Many teams decide to push for that one seemingly perfect day, rather than waiting or assuming that there might be several more good days still to come,” says Viesturs. That issue of crowding on summit day, he argues, could be resolved by the leaders of the teams coming together and making a plan to spread out the summit pushes, rather than all going on the same day.

While Viesturs does not have much interest in climbers chasing speed records on the 8,000-meter peaks, there is plenty about climbing in the Himalaya that still excites him.

“There are many climbers out there doing amazing ascents with little fanfare or publicity. The recent ascent of the (25,300 feet), done in alpine style, is a great example of the future of climbing,” says Viesturs. “Hard ascents done by small teams, often on relatively unknown peaks.”

These climbs often go unnoticed because of how difficult it is to describe just how futuristic they are. The climb on Jannu, for example, involved a push up a face three times the size of Yosemite’s El Capitan, climbing pitch after pitch of vertical rock and ice for seven days. The most difficult pitches of climbing would have been quite difficult for most expert ice climbers at a crag, let alone at 25,000 feet.

“The general public doesn’t really care, but the folks that know what these climbs involve are paying attention,” says Viesturs.

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How Much Should I Tip My Guide? We Asked Guides How Much to Give.

mturner — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 12:00:35 +0000

I was on a backcountry hut trip in British Columbia last winter, and at the end of an incredible, powder-filled week, my group of friends and I realized what most of us had forgotten: cash. Specifically, enough money to tip our two hard-working ski guides, as well as the cook, who’d been making us delicious meals morning and night, and the hut caretaker, who’d been pre-heating the sauna and shoveling the path to the outhouse.

It was a major oversight on our part. In the end, we cobbled together what cash we had and the rest of us chipped in via PayPal, a clunky fix.

In America, we know that when we go into a restaurant, it’s expected that, assuming the service is decent, you will leave your waiter a 15 to 20 percent tip on the bill. But when you go on, say, a guided backcountry ski trip or a whitewater rafting trip with a commercial outfitter or an afternoon of guided fly-fishing, the assumptions of gratuity are less clear. Are you always supposed to tip in those cases, and if so, how much?

“Guiding is very similar to the restaurant industry. It’s a service industry,” says Shane Robinson, a Seattle-based mountain guide and the founder of . He also guides for the company . “Unfortunately, guides are probably not paid as well as they should be. So, most guides rely on those tips to make ends meet.”

Ice Axe Expeditions’ guide Lel Tone (left) on a backcountry ski trip with the author and friends in the West Fjords of Iceland (Photo: Megan Michelson)

Tips for outdoor guides and instructors vary wildly—some people tip a lot, some less, others don’t tip at all—and every destination is different. If you’re traveling internationally, many countries don’t have a tipping culture like the U.S.

“Tipping these days is much more common, but it’s not across the board,” says Dave Hahn, a long-time guide for who has guided on peaks like Mount Rainier and Mount Everest. “I think of a tip as a reward for a meaningful time or for someone putting themselves out there for you, not as an expectation.”

Given that guides are often the one who makes your trip or instruction stand out above the rest, we recommend always being prepared to tip. But sorting out how much to give and when to give it after a shared adventure can be awkward, confusing, and feel so hush hush, like no one’s talking openly about it.

Well, we are. We asked all the hard and awkward questions to provide these dos-and-don’ts guidelines on how to tip like a pro.

1. Do the Math

Typically, the gratuity rate for guides should be around 10 to 20 percent of the total trip cost. That means if you’re paying $500 for a day or two of guided rock climbing, an appropriate tip for your guide would be between $50 and $100.

2. Do Tip Even On Pricey Trips

Maybe you’ve just thrown down $5,000 for a Grand Canyon river trip. That’s a huge chunk of cash for a guided trip. Do you really have to tip on top of that? The answer is yes. “I sometimes find that when the cost of the trip is higher, people tend to tip less,” says Canadian guide Holly Walker, an ACMG-certified hiking and ski guide and owner of .

What helps me is to go ahead and factor in a 10 to 20 percent tip based on the total price of the trip into my initial budget to reduce the shock factor. So for that $5,000 trip, I’d tip $500 to $1,000 to be split up amongst the guides.

3. Do Prepare Ahead

Being a good tipper means planning in advance. You don’t want to get caught at the end of your trip without any cash. (Like, um, me.) Sandy Cunningham, CEO and co-founder of the adventure travel company , advises her clients to pack a dozen or so envelopes, each filled with predetermined amounts of money and labeled for their recipient: driver, guide, cook, cleaning staff, etc. “You have your travel pouch with all the important things: passports, vaccination cards, envelopes with tip money,” Cunningham says. “That way you’re ready.”

4. Do Tip at the End of Your Trip

Some guiding services will offer a tip for the guide to be added onto your credit card purchase when you book the trip. But tipping is a token of gratitude that should be delivered at the end of your trip, based on a job well done. Typically, there’s a parting moment, when you and your guide are saying your goodbyes. That’s the best time to pass over the envelope and say thank you for the experience.

“At the end of your time, you pull the envelope out and give it to the person directly,” says Cunningham. “I will often bring my own thank you cards and write a personal note, too.”

5. Do Bring Cash

“I joke that I’ll take whatever form you’re paying in. We’re grateful for however it comes,” Shane Robinson says. But cash is king. If you can’t get cash or don’t want to travel with a wad of bills, American guides are accustomed to receiving online tips via Venmo these days. Just make sure you get their Venmo handle so you pay the right person. “It’s sometimes easier to divide up an electronic tip amongst a guide staff,” adds Hahn.

Venmo is currently only supported in the U.S., so if your guide is Canadian or from any other country, cash is the best form of payment. If you book your guide through a site like , the app has tipping built in, and that’s a fine way to tip your guide. If you’re tipping porters, drivers, and local guides directly, cash is always preferred.

6. Do Give U.S. Dollars

Ask Walker, the Canadian guide, about preferred currency and she will say: “U.S. dollars are always OK.” So, feel free to get cash from an ATM at home before leaving the country if you don’t want to deal with picking up local currency when you arrive. “Unless it’s stipulated otherwise, people love U.S. Dollars, especially if their currency is weak,” adds Sandy Cunningham.

7. Don’t Forget About Instructional Settings

Guiding can come in many forms—including lessons from a wide range of instructors. Say your kid takes a private lesson from an instructor at a ski resort in the U.S. or you sign up for a mountain bike clinic or a running retreat. A tip is always appreciated. Again, 10 to 20 percent of the lesson price would be about right. Many guides also teach avalanche safety classes or mountaineering courses, and though tips are far less common in those situations because they’re less service oriented, the guides say they’re very grateful when people think to tip afterward. “As guides, the work is essentially the same,” Robinson says.

8. Do Remember the Rest of the Staff

Whether you’re at a backcountry hut, a wilderness lodge, or a safari camp, you might have a guide or two, as well as a cook, caretaker, or cleaning staff. At the end of your trip, plan on tipping out everybody in a service position. First, tip your guide 10 to 20 percent of the total cost. If you have multiple guides, you can tip the lead guide and they can split that up amongst the other guides. Then leave a separate tip—look for a designated tip box, or ask your guide where to leave it—to be distributed amongst the rest of the staff.

“If you’re heli-skiing, you’ve got pilots, waiters, housekeeping, bartenders, tail guides. If you’re on Kilimanjaro, you’ve got porters, people building tents, local guides,” Hahn says. “Those are times when you probably want to touch base with your guide. You can say, ‘How do I take care of the support staff?’ I don’t want to be bashful about those conversations. I consider that part of my job as your guide to make sure that local staff gets tipped properly. They’re much more dependent on those tips than I am.”

9. Do Collect Your Tips if You’re in a Group

If you’re traveling with family or a group of friends, it’s best to collect your cash into one joint gratuity. You can agree on a set amount per person or each contribute what you’re able. That way, the guide isn’t receiving stealthy handshakes with cash from a dozen different people from the same group. “Having the group collect the tip is definitely preferred and nicer for everyone,” says Walker. “Everyone can still say their goodbyes, but it’s less transactions that way.”

10. Don’t Tip in Beer

Any sign of gratitude—be it a hand-written card or a gift certificate or a nice bottle of whiskey—will be appreciated. But again, cash rules. “Buying your guide a meal or beer at the end of the trip—everyone will appreciate that. That’s nice in addition to your tip,” Hahn says. “My point is anything is nice. If someone had a really good trip and credits you with it and expresses that, they don’t always have to say that in money.”

11. Do Tip Even If You Didn’t Summit

So, you paid for a guided trip and for one reason or another, things didn’t go as planned. Like all adventures in the outdoors, final outcomes can be unpredictable. “Nobody should have to pay for service that was subpar,” Cunningham says. If your guide really let you down, factor that into your tip.

But if you didn’t make it to the summit, that doesn’t mean your guide didn’t work hard. “Sometimes good guiding means saying no,” Hahn says. “There’s this perception that you didn’t get us to the top of the mountain, so perhaps you didn’t work as hard as you might have. But obviously, on those days where it’s avalanche conditions or storms or something happened where you had the good sense to not get anyone hurt, that’s still hard work.”

12. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

Gratuity in general has so many nuances, especially so in the outdoor world. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. “Before you go, check with the operation that you’re booking through if you have any questions about tipping,” Hahn says. Outfitters these days will often provide an exact number or a range of what to consider tipping.

But maybe don’t ask your guide out right what you should pay them as a tip: That exact number is still up to you. “I guided a family for a week and as we were saying our goodbyes, they said, ‘If you were us, how much would you tip you?’” Walker recalls. “It felt very awkward to ask me that directly. I told them, ‘I would tip a percentage that I thought was appropriate.’”

The bottom line is, be prepared to tip. Guiding is hard and often low-pay work, and gratuities are always appreciated.

��ԹϺ�� Correspondent Megan Michelson is an avid traveler who has used many guides on her adventures around the world.

The post How Much Should I Tip My Guide? We Asked Guides How Much to Give. appeared first on ��ԹϺ�� Online.

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