Guiding & Certification
in the News
March/April
2000 issue, Professional Help - This excellent article by Jerry
Beilinson describes the heated debate over certification in American
ski guiding circles. The article doesn't take either side on the issue.
Just as in the rock and alpine guiding disciplines there is a movement
to encourage ski guides to become formally trained and certified and
this movement is being strongly resisted by many established ski guides,
schools, and guiding outfits. The article begins by describing how most
ski guides have been part-timers barely making any money and how that
may be changing now due largely to the efforts of Jean Pavillard (one
of only a very few fully certified international guides working in this
country) and others who are trying to turn mountain guiding into a true
profession. Following are some excerpts. Quotes from the article are
in color. CGI text is black.
That's changing, and Jean is a big reason why. He is attempting to bring European-style career guiding to the United States. He runs a highly regarded school for guides in Crested Butte. And as the recently retired technical director of the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA), Jean is at the forefront of a movement to sell American guides on an international system of certification. The question is, will they buy it?
Not all guides are excited about importing European standards. The skills needed to pass the certification tests can take years to acquire, and the tests themselves are time-consuming and expensive. If certification ever becomes important to clients-or even required for guiding on public lands-American guiding companies could be thrown into a tailspin.
You can't blame guides for not being excited about having to prove they can meet a standard. Not everybody enjoys training or going to school and most people won't admit to being happy about being tested or examined, especially when they already think they are pretty good at what they're doing. But, no mountain guide has ever come through a formal course a worse guide than when he or she entered it. No matter how good or experienced a guide is, there's always of room for improvement. Nobody knows everything. And certification should become important to clients. How many potential clients wouldn't like to know that their guide passed one of these certification tests? This could only make them feel better about the guide they are considering. If requiring guides to have the skills needed to pass a minimum standard could make American guiding companies go into a tailspin, what does this say about these companies?
With the future of American guiding at stake, the debate Jean has engendered is a heated one. Mike Hattrup, for one, thinks certification is just what America needs. "Right now, you can just write "guide" on a business card and hand it out," says the famous extreme skier. "The AMGA is a way to ensure a baseline level of knowledge so you can find a safe, competent guide." After all, lawyers, accountants, and EMT's need to pass a test in order to work. Why not mountain guides?
Not everyone is happy, though. As one potent line of argument against the AMGA goes, guides just don't need to be certified. America has some of the best mountaineers and skiers on the planet. Why should they bother with certification? "I know Jean teaches an excellent course," says Dean Cummings. But, Valdez guiding outfits are populated with world-class mountaineers, and they face world-class dangers. "I'm not bringing some guy into the range just because he has AMGA certification," says Cummings.
This article picks right up on the above argument against certification. We see this a lot. There are two problems with this argument. The first is that these people who are some of the "best mountaineers and skiers on the planet" may know that they really are this good, but how does the person looking for a guide know that they are this good? The certification isn't for the guide, it's for the protection of their potential clients. It's to ensure that anyone a client hires meets at least a minimum standard of expertise whether they are world class or not. What about the statement, "guides just don't need to be certified"? It's probably a good thing that other kinds of professionals who's work involves people's safety or well being don't get far with this argument. The second problem is that just because someone is a world-class skier or mountaineer doesn't necessarily mean that they are automatically an excellent guide or even qualified to guide. For instance, a world-class mathematician isn't automatically an excellent teacher of math. Doing high-end math and teaching it are two very different things requiring different skills. The same is true in this case. A good ski guide must of course first be a good skier. But, the skills required to be a qualified guide are different and in addition to those required to be an excellent skier. Guiding isn't skiing or climbing! It's very different.
More explosively, the AMGA threatens the country's most established outfitters: It wants to break the virtual monopolies those companies hold over the crown jewels of the American landscape.
Currently, to guide in a place like Teton National Park, you need to get a concession from the National Park Service. Just as though you wanted to open a gas station or sell hot dogs. If you don't guide for a concessionaire, you don't guide. For instance, Pavillard frequently climbs with clients in the Andes. But he can't ski Washington State's Mount Rainier with them. He can guide you to Pakistan if you ask, but not on a day tour through Yellowstone. Some guides liken the system to communism, where state-anointed businesses are immune to competition.
Right now you don't have the right to climb on most public lands with the guide of your choosing. You must climb with a guide who works for an existing concession or permit holder. Public land managers insist that the guide you hire works for a concessionaire or permit holder. However, there is no requirement whatsoever that the guide you hire be qualified or trained in any way. The only requirement is that they have a permit.
There are a couple of problems with this system. First, someone looking to hire a guide has little choice in who they can hire. He or she may have been climbing with someone like Jean Pavillard for years, but could be forced to climb with an inexperienced guide with little or no training if they want to climb in an area in which their guide doesn't hold a permit. Also, the only quality-control placed upon guides in a permitted area is controlled by the permit holder or concessionaire and this is not a good way to ensure safe or quality guiding. No business should be allowed to be solely responsible for establishing and maintaining standards in any profession where the public's safety is involved, especially when that business is the public's only option. There has to be a system outside of the guiding outfits or schools to do this and this system could be certification of guides by an outside agency such as the AMGA.