Trip Planning & Preparation · 7 min
Screening the party before you sell the trip
Why this matters
Almost every backcountry emergency involving a guided party can be traced to a mismatch between the trip and the people on it. That mismatch is created at the booking stage, in an office, weeks before anyone is cold. It is the cheapest place in the whole business to fix a problem.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- List what you must know about a client before confirming a booking
- Explain why medical and fitness information changes the plan rather than just the paperwork
- Set and communicate an honest difficulty rating
The regulation calls this "trip planning and preparation" and puts it on the general exam for every guide. In practice it starts with people, not gear.
What you need to know about each client
- Experience, in specifics, not adjectives. "Experienced hiker" means nothing. "Six miles with a day pack, last October, no elevation" means everything
- Fitness, honestly benchmarked. Ask about a recent comparable day rather than about the gym
- Medical conditions and medications: cardiac history, asthma, diabetes, seizure disorders, severe allergies, recent surgery, pregnancy, mobility limits
- Allergies, food and sting, and whether they carry epinephrine and it is in date
- Swimming ability, for anything near water, always, without embarrassment
- Age, and for minors, who the responsible adult is and whether they are coming
- Emergency contact, with a phone number that will be answered
- Equipment they own, so you know what to supply
Take it in writing. A form does two things a conversation cannot: it produces a record, and it makes the client think before answering.
What you do with the answers
The point is not liability paperwork. It is that each answer changes something concrete.
| What you learn | What changes |
|---|---|
| A client carries an epinephrine auto-injector | You know where it is, and a second person does too |
| Diabetes, insulin dependent | Food timing, extra carbohydrate in your pack, cold protection for insulin in winter |
| Cannot swim | PFD worn, not stowed, and the route avoids the crossing |
| Slowest client walks 1.5 mph | The whole timetable, because the party moves at that speed |
| Cardiac history | Your evacuation thinking starts before you leave the trailhead |
Rating the trip honestly
Give every trip a difficulty description in plain language: distance, elevation gain, terrain, hours on foot, what happens if the weather turns, and what a client must be able to do unaided. "Moderate" is not a rating. "Nine miles, 2,400 feet of gain, seven to nine hours, wet rock, no bail-out after mile four" is.
Turning a client down is a professional skill. It is easier to say no in March than to say it at 3,000 feet with weather coming in.
Ratios
New York does not set a guide-to-client ratio outside the group-size caps in Part 190. That leaves it to your judgment, which means it is your responsibility. The considerations are terrain, technicality, client experience, water, weather and the age of the party. If a single incident would leave the rest of the group unsupervised, you have too few guides.
From the field
A client fills the form in as 'fit, hikes regularly'. On the phone you ask what their last hike was. It was a two-mile flat loop, three years ago. You move them to a different trip. Everything that would have gone wrong on the original one is now not going to happen.
This lesson is part of the NYS Licensed Guide Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.