Earlier today, we featured a nice short film about a woman aspiring to guide wooden dories down the Colorado in the Grand Canyon and one of the people in the film claimed that being a river guide is the best job in the world. Well, whether it’s the best job on the planet is, of course, debatable, but that also raises the question, if it’s so fantastic, does it trump all other guiding jobs?
Running rivers is like car camping without any people or cars around – as one friend put it of her last trip, “We took two Dutch ovens!” – and the people in your care are (generally) confined to their boats. A helicopter skiing guide, on the other hand, has to contend with thick woods, tree wells, and crevasses; plenty of places to lose a charge. Alpine mountain guides deal with tremendous objective dangers. Safari guides carry guns.
And what, in your estimation, is the most important factor? Is it the environment? The challenges (or lack of them) in the job? The type of people you lead? The level of training required?
We’ve run this poll before, but our summer issue features a lovely story about becoming a river guide in Idaho in our summer issue of AJ in print, shipping now, which you can order, here, and it got us to wondering if anything has changed out there in reader land.
Let’s dive in.
Photo: Mick Haupt
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All would be awesome!
Heliskiing and you get paid! Sounds good to me.
Being a backcountry skiing guide would be SO cool
All day in the mountains is a day well spent!
fishing guide gets no love?
Fishing guide!!!
Outward Bound!
My experience has taught me that guiding is way overrated. Sure its cool laying down a fresh line everyday and getting paid for it, but the reality of the uncontrollable, objective dangers encountered up high made me lose interest after a few years.
Dead / injured clients are not cool. Shreds with your (equally experienced and proficient) bros on the other hand are rad.
I mean really, what if you lose a client to an ‘avoidable’ accident? Thats a heavy burden to carry I think.
Don’t know if I would like being a guide.
How about the plain old adventure guide, the jack of all guides
Helicopter ski guide. Because helicopter skiing.
All of the above.
gotta be the heli-skiing guide, everything else you can do anyways
backcountry ski guide!
Love the water!
I hate snow and cold so I went with river guide.
I think you get to drink the most beer if your a river guide..
travel guide… varied duties and sights!
Heli guide.
Any!
Heli-guide. Just for the shear excitement of flying around big mountains. Skiing down them is a pretty incredible plus. It would be hard to loose a client or a fellow guide, absolutely. I will probably never be a heli guide so this is pretty much a fantasy land question for me.
Second pace would have to be a mountain guide. Especially if you were Ina place like chamonix. Imknowmthat a lot of professional skiers will even ski or climb with guides there so that would be pretty neat. Imagine getting paid to show someone who has equal skills to you around a beautiful mountain range.
River guide but specifically a drift boat fishing guide. Time off in the winter to ski and then able to fish prime rivers all summer long. Pure bliss!
Any outdoor guide is the best job
I would want the guide job that has the easiest clients.
I have a good friend who for years worked for a high-end bike touring company. She preferred leading mt bike tours because the people weren’t as high-maintenance as the people on the road tours.
Still, heli-guide would be cool.
Nothing better than a summer on a river.
Mountain guide with a side of backcountry ski guide.
Helicopters!
guide the white mountains
Tough decision … Many good on s here!
To further split out the river guide category…. I would add kayak guide on multi-day river trips. You boat with the guests all day, maybe pitch in at lunch time, and roll into a camp that is already set-up with nothing to do except share a beverage with the guests.
The best thing about guiding is experiencing something you’ve seen many times over again as brand new. The worste part, responsibility for people’s fun and safety
should have had a “none” box….jus sayin
snorkel/scuba guide!
I believe a fishing guide has to be up there.
anything where I get to ride in a helicopter!!!
Mountains are where the fun is at !
River Guide
I was torn because I had to pick between mountain guiding and backcountry ski guiding. I would have further split the mountain guiding to rock, alpine, and mountaineering, but that would make the list too long. I finally picked backcountry ski guiding, because its more fun more often.
But I really, really love both, and I’ve been doing this for 15 years (longer if I include my outdoor ed time, longer still if I include my time in the military). I can’t think of any other job that would have let me climb, ski, run and pack +200 days a year, travel internationally 3-5 times a year, and make a sustainable career doing it.
For many of you naysayers in the comments, I’d like to invite you to come out with me sometime. Not all of my guests are novices, I don’t repeat the same route endlessly, and one of my more rewarding experiences is showing someone an experience that they never thought possible in their lifetime.
Cheers- Chris
Turn it into work?
I’ve been a full time, year round professional mountain guide for over a decade. That’s Rock, Ice, Alpine, and Ski. And to get there I spent 4 decades mastering these sports first, for myself.
The best guide to be, on any given day, is down to a ton of factors. Not least being your clients goals, objectives and abilities. Matched with the terrain and possibilities.
It’s no fun rock guiding on a 3 foot powder day….
Backcountry ski guides have the best clients and get the most exercise.
Done the mountain guide gig…it’s rad to be in the mountains, but it can also be a terrible babysitting job, when you get the wrong clients.
Gotta go with mountain guide. Best scenery day in and day out!
Outward bound guide
I think being a boat pilot on charters would be the best. You just drive the boat but you don’t have to cook meals or pitch in – you are just guiding the boat!
River Guide, specifically a Grand Canyon guide. Thing is with the ‘River Guide’ choice, there is a whole huge world of difference between a 17 year old guide who runs daily’s on a comfortably warm river in the southeast, and the adult professional who guides 8 to 20 + day river trips through real wilderness with real consequences. Not the same job, not even close to the same people/culture. That said, for all the (perceived) glory of being a guide in any milieu, you’re at base a hand holder and babysitter. I’ve done more than a few Grand trips where people’s lives were actually changed by the experience, and it is a beautiful thing to be a part of. But that is the exception, not the rule. But at it’s worst, it’s still a helluva lot better than sitting dying in front a computer screen 8 hours a day….
Well, as a backpacking guide, I’m a tad partial. It is outstanding work, but way harder than most realize.
Then again, the rewards …
Ok ok ok, heli ski guide
Bring it!
MTB guide. We were mostly like river guides- glorified caterers. However every client is ultimately in charge of their adventure. Plus half the day you’ve got me time in the cab of a new air conditioned F350.
They would all be dope!
Backcountry or heli ski guide, it’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
River Guide
I’d love to be a travel or mountain guide. The experiences would be awesome and different every time.
Ever had to clean the groovers after a multi day river trip?
Ever had a client die?
Have a serious injury requiring emergency evac?
How many tents do you have to set up?
How many people are you cooking and cleaning for?
Guiding sounds like a dream to those who’ve never done it past year one or two.
By year three reality sets in.
Clients are a responsibility and they can also be a burden and at times clueless assholes.
Cue the trip leader whose clients started a major fire in a remote river canyon when they decided to try and burn their used TP.
I voted with my feet.
I voted to return to keeping my recreation strictly recreation.
I saw I commented on this years, so I’ll give another take.
Like TV said above, there can be a lot of babysitting involved. A LOT. Remember, you’re dealing with the general public, and some clients may have slightly exaggerated their abilities. So, now you have a number of clients on your trip and you have to keep all of them happy, from the ripped 22 yo to the overweight macho guy to the whining rich lady. The great guides are the ones that somehow pull it off. I would not be able to, I’m just not a good butt-kisser.
Then, there’s the whole responsibility thing, making sure the skiers follow protocol, that the kayakers make the crossing safely before the wind kicks up, and that none of the mt bikers have a really bad crash. That would drive me nuts.
Bottom line: I give a lot of credit to the great guides out there. They may make it look easy, but behind that happy-go-lucky attitude is someone thinking about their clients all the time, making sure they are safe and enjoying themselves.
Mountain biking guiding is by far the best. All these other jobs you gotta be in a tight helicopter or dory or vehicle with these clueless, useless clients all day. Biking, you can zip to the lead or fall to the tail and spend a little – but not too much – time with all the guests.
Heli Ski!!!!!!!
Speaking from many decades of my own adventures, I have found guides of any sport to be invasive species.
I could never have been a guide, as I feel it would bastardize my favorite hobbies. I can only imagine guiding has gotten worse in the six years since this article first appeared, what with the Covid, crowds, and Instagram culture. For a positive take, read “Teewinot” by Jack Turner. He was a longtime guide in the Tetons and loved to experience a climb vicariously through his clients.