All 44 lessons
Every lesson in the NYS Licensed Guide Exam course, free to read: 44 lessons across 14 units. Read any of them here, or open the course to answer the checks, track progress and quiz each unit.
The Licence Itself
Who has to hold a guide licence, what it costs, what you must carry, and how you can lose it. Statute and regulation, close to the words the state uses.
Who is a guide, in law
Everything else follows from this one definition. People get it wrong in both directions: some run guided trips for years without…
Getting licensed: the paperwork
Nearly everyone who fails to get licensed in the year they intended fails on paperwork, not on the exam. The certificates take…
The activity categories, and their extra hurdles
Two of the six activities cannot be reached by studying. Whitewater and climbing licences require a documented record you either…
The exam, the badge, and losing the licence
You are about to sit these exams, so it is worth knowing what the regulation says they will cover. And the back end of the…
Rules on State Land
Part 190, the Forest Preserve, group-size and permit thresholds, the High Peaks rules, and the difference between Wilderness and Wild Forest. The law you break by accident.
Whose land is it: Forest Preserve, Wilderness, Wild Forest
A client asks whether they can take the mountain bike, or bring the dog, or land a float plane. The answer is never 'it depends…
Camping on State land: 190.3 and 190.4
These two sections are the most quoted, most violated regulations in the course, and a guide is the person responsible when a…
The High Peaks rules, and why they are different
If you guide in the Adirondacks you will end up in the High Peaks, and the rules there are stricter than anywhere else in the…
Working commercially on public land
The guide licence authorises you to guide. It does not authorise every commercial use of State land, and the difference matters…
Trip Planning & Preparation
Screening clients, building a timetable that survives contact with real people, gear and food, the trip plan you leave behind, and the decisions you make before anyone is tired.
Screening the party before you sell the trip
Almost every backcountry emergency involving a guided party can be traced to a mismatch between the trip and the people on it…
Building a timetable that holds
197.6(c)(4) puts 'timetable construction' on the hiking exam by name. It is also the skill that keeps parties out of the dark…
Gear, food and water for a party
The exam names 'equipment selection and use'. The job names it too: your clients will arrive with what they own, some of which is…
The trip plan you leave behind
Search and rescue in New York begins with a Forest Ranger asking where the party was going. If nobody can answer, the search area…
Land Navigation
Topographic maps, the compass, New York's westerly declination, taking and walking a bearing, relocating a lost party, and where GPS helps and where it fails.
Reading a topographic map
Every other navigation skill is downstream of this one. If you can read contours fluently you can see the ground before you walk…
The compass and New York's declination
Every declination in New York is west, and that single fact makes the state's navigation arithmetic consistent. Get the direction…
Position, relocation and a lost party
The skill that matters is not staying found. It is what you do in the ten minutes after you realise you are not. That is a…
GPS, phones and what they cannot do
Your clients will navigate by phone whether you approve or not, and you will use a GPS yourself because it is genuinely good…
Weather Knowledge
Basic meteorology as the regulation calls it: fronts and air masses, reading clouds and pressure, lightning, and the mountain weather that makes New York's summits their own climate.
Air masses, fronts and pressure
The forecast tells you what is expected. Understanding why tells you what to do when the sky stops matching the forecast, which…
Clouds, lightning and mountain weather
Clouds are the forecast you can see from the trail, and lightning above treeline is the fastest-moving lethal hazard in New York…
New York's own weather problems
General meteorology is on the exam. Local meteorology keeps clients alive, and New York has four or five patterns that catch…
Survival
The priorities in order, shelter and fire, water and signalling, and what actually happens to lost people. Survival is mostly a set of decisions made in the first hour.
The priorities, in order
Survival situations are lost in the first hour, by doing the fourth thing first. The order is not arbitrary: it follows how…
Shelter, fire and warmth
Exposure is the New York killer, and the fix is insulation and a windbreak, in that order. Fire matters, but it is a distant…
Water, signalling, and being found
Rescue in New York is competent and well organised. Your job is to make the party easy to find and able to wait, which is a…
Safety & Emergency Response
The certifications the licence requires, the injuries and illnesses that actually happen here, evacuation decisions, and what a guide does in the first ten minutes.
Scene management and the first ten minutes
Your first aid card teaches you to treat a patient. Guiding adds the harder problem: you have a patient and also five other…
The injuries and illnesses that happen here
New York guiding has a short list of predictable problems. Hypothermia and heat illness dominate, ankles and knees are the common…
Evacuation and calling for help
The decision to evacuate, and how, is the guide's decision alone. Get it wrong in one direction and you turn a walk-out into a…
Camp Sanitation & Health
Human waste, greywater, food hygiene, the diseases that come from getting it wrong, and the low-impact ethic the exam calls environmental considerations.
Human waste and greywater
This is the topic every guide is embarrassed to brief and every guide must brief. Poor waste practice is how a group gives itself…
Food, water and camp cleanliness
197.6(c)(3) puts camp cleanliness and waste disposal on the camping exam by name. It is also how you avoid the two things that…
Low-impact practice as a professional standard
197.6 puts 'environmental considerations' on the general exam and 'consideration of camping impact' and 'minimising environmental…
Winter & Special Considerations
Cold injury, traction and snowshoes, ice, short days, and the ways a winter trip is a different animal from the same route in July.
Cold injury and staying warm all day
The exam outline names winter considerations in the general section and again under hiking and camping, because New York's winter…
Travel: snowshoes, traction and ice
The hiking definition in 197.2(a) includes snowshoes, so winter travel is squarely on the licence. Choosing the wrong footwear…
Winter camping and the long night
A winter overnight is not a summer overnight in more clothes. Everything takes longer, water is a project, and the night is…
Boats & Canoes
The small-craft exam: flotation devices, the vocabulary, entering and leaving, capsize and rescue, motorboat law, and the invasive species you must not move between waters.
Personal flotation devices and New York law
The exam outline opens the small-craft section with life jackets, and the licence itself requires Basic Water Safety…
Terms, trim, and getting in and out
The exam names terminology and entering and leaving craft as separate topics for a reason: most small-boat incidents happen in…
Capsize, rescue and weather on the water
The outline lists capsize procedure and rescue of others as their own topics, and they are the ones clients most want to know you…
Camping
The camping exam: philosophy of camping, campsite selection, fire building, waste, cleanliness and impact. Needed by anyone taking clients out overnight, in any specialty.
Choosing and setting a campsite
197.6(c)(3) names 'campsite consideration' as an exam subject, and it is the decision that determines whether the night is…
Fire, cooking and running a camp
'Fire building' and 'camp cleanliness' are both named subjects. Fire in particular is the thing clients most want and the thing…
Hiking
The hiking exam: planning, equipment selection and use, timetable construction, and minimising environmental impact. Snowshoes included, by definition.
Running a hiking party on the trail
The hiking exam's four named subjects are planning, gear, timetables and impact, and the first three are covered in the general…
Footwear, feet and the ground New York gives you
'Equipment selection and use' is a named exam subject, and for hiking that is mostly boots and feet. Blisters end more guided…
Fishing
The fishing exam: laws and regulations, fish identification, tackle and technique, fish behaviour, fish and trophy care, safety, and the invasive species you must not spread.
Licences, regulations and using the guide
The state lets you consult the freshwater fishing regulations guide during this exam, which tells you exactly what it wants: not…
Fish identification and behaviour
'Fish identification' is a named exam subject, and it is also a legal skill: seasons and limits are species-specific, so…
Tackle, fish care and fishing safety
The exam names tackle and techniques, fish and trophy care, and fishing safety as three separate subjects. In the boat they are…
Hunting
The hunting exam: laws and regulations for big and small game, firearms, hunter safety, game identification, and meat and trophy care.
Licences, seasons and using the hunting guide
As with fishing, the state lets you consult the current hunting regulations guide during this exam. That tells you the exam is…
Firearms and hunter safety
'Firearms' and 'hunting safety' are two of the five named subjects, and they are the two where a guide's failure is…
Game identification, meat and trophy care
Two named exam subjects, and both are what clients judge you on afterwards. Anyone can find a deer. The guide is the person who…