Poster: A snowHead
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Ski guides are facing increasingly difficult decisions, in a context of clients with poor fitness levels making 'Playstation-inspired' demands for action and extremes.
Off piste website PisteHors.com highlights issues which arose at a recent guides' conference in Chamonix, rasing core questions about the responsibilities and aims of the professionals involved...
Click here for their news report, which mentions a number of interesting issues and conflicts that can arise in a guide's working day. They include:
- The tendency of guides nowadays to come from cities, rather than the mountain villages they serve.
- The demands of clients for "absolute safety" while demanding testing adventure.
- Complexities which arise from the "extended season", "risk evaluation", and even "globalization...productivity, competition, markets."
This was all discussed against a background of nine guides and six clients dying in the French mountains during 2004 - twice the average.
Given the hazards, it's obviously imperative that a guide maintains control of a situation and asserts risk management. Should the law indemnify him or her from prosecution or civil damages if a client is injured or killed?
What's your experience of guides? Good value? Good assessors of risk?
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Wed 15-12-04 14:48; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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David Goldsmith wrote: |
Should the law indemnify him or her from prosecution or civil damages if a client is injured or killed?
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As usual the answer is "depends". If it's an accident - yes.
If it's the guide doing something that no reasonable guide would do - no.
Real problem, how do you define what a "reasonable" guide would do?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I was skiing with a guide who had been seconded for the season from a 'well known' Ski School. There had been an enormous fall of snow but some rain too and we were well aware that the local avalanche risk was at its highest for a few years.
We stayed on lower slopes and headed for wooded areas. On the way, we needed to traverse a small convex slope which was identified by our guide as high risk. He was very clear that we should stay as high as possible so we could cross the high risk area where the gradient was at its least. He instructed us to wait in the safe zone until he had reached safety on the other side, then to cross one by one.
Just before he reached the other side, an instructor from 'a well known ski school' came into view and without hesitation, led his group straight into the danger zone below us. Our guy called out a warning, assuming we hadn't been seen. Surpirisingly, the response was derisive so we waited for them to clear and continued over.
Obviously our man was unimpressed, "zis guy sink he can do zis because he is more in hirarchie in ze ski school but really he just make for his cliente ze risk of die".
Without a guide, I wouldn't have dared stray an inch off piste that day so there was quite a strong element of trust involved. I'm just pleased I didn't get the other guy!
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Ski guides, off-piste and risk. Interesting subject.
1. You would think local guides who have grown up in the resort would be better. But maybe not.
2. Nothing is absolutely safe, and guides who suggest otherwise do themselves no favours.
3. I wonder if the second guide in Ubrain's story was recounting in the pub that night how he had been shouted at by some stupid inexperienced ignorant colleague who clearly did not know how to read the conditions and was pussy-footing across an obviously safe section.
4. If there is an accident, what a reasonable guide would do will no doubt be decided in court.
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