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After a recent "how to be an MTB guide in the Alps" course with an, err, diverse range of motivations and experience behind the folk attending, I'm curious what the singletrackworldhivemind thinks about what makes for a good, or even great, MTB guide in the Alps?
Do you want near encyclopedic knowledge of the trails? Chris Akrigg level riding skills? Riding from the front to tow you through technical sections, riding at the back to fix your mechanicals as quick as possible? Fluency in the language of all 8 alpine nations, or just a massive repertoire of incredibly inappropriate jokes?
Please, let me know!
....aaaand giving it a quick bump as the approval process meant it had fallen off the page when the question got made visible!
Good knowledge of the trail network and the skills to comfortably ride the trails they are guiding on. Knowledge to fix most common bike issues would also be good.
Don't mind where they are in the group, just as long as the group doesn't get lost or massively split.
Thinking of the best guides I've ridden with
Great trail knowledge, able to accurately describe trail features in relation to the group's ability, able to ride the trail comfortably and coach people who want to ride features that are maybe more challenging than their normal riding, responsive to the group's pace so stopping or pushing on as needed as well as extending or shortening the route, calm and clear even in difficult times.
I've been to the Alps on my road bike, but if I were to go with my MTB I'd want the following:
1- The ability of the guide to assess my skill in the first place - it's easy to get sandbagged with grading systems (difficulty/challenge can vary from place to place).
2- Fun challenges based on 1 above, with all the giggles and excitement as you'd expect.
3- Knowledge of the local routes - to encourage/direct solo riding after being guided for a day (not sure how it usually works?).
4- To be able to say (at the end of it) "that was worth it and made a difference to my trip - I'd pay for that on the next trip too".
On the back of @thepurist's post, I do some coaching, guiding is a different thing and qualification, so assuming the Alp countries are similar, it would be a guide who was suitably qualified to lead/guide and who is also qualified to coach, especially if I was paying for it.
Aware that sounds like I'm removing the fun from it and I'm not trying to, but there is a big push to be clear what is happening - leading/guiding or coaching and the need to be qualified to do either or both.
I wouldn't bother what the qualifications were if I wasn't paying as I'd assume it was mates out for a pedal.
Someone who is calm in a crisis and can quickly formulate an effective plan and put it into action
Good trail knowledge and the ability to ride the trails well, not drive like a lunatic, good taste in music and good sense of humour. Oh and quite important for me, give the information and check the capability of every single person, don't just single me out because I have boobs and assume I'm the one who needs the spiel.
1. The ability to judge the overall ability and intent of the group. Too many guides seem to want to push your skills when this isn't always wanted.
2. Really good trail knowledge. The ability to show the group something that isn't on trail forks/maps is often overlooked.
3. Ability to "look after" the group ... First aid knowledge, mechanical knowledge.
4. Riding ability comes last as it is almost a given for pretty much every guide I've used.
Cheers for all the replies, to summarise a good guide needs a supply of cookies, fine taste in music and an identical twin to put at the other end of the group..... 🙂
The coaching/guiding differentiation is an interesting point, the course at the weekend was for "instructor / guides" and, being at the first rung of the ladder to maybe EOmtbing award, focused firstly on safety of the group then after was a mix of how to guide AND how to coach, but they are 2 very different skills and I feel folk tend to be better at one than the other, but does that mean a good guide shouldn't have reasonable coaching skills and a good coach reasonable guiding skills? Certainly in France to reach either guide qualifications you need to be very well practiced at both, and for the upper level able to coach competitors of theoretically WC level.
I reckon most guides would agree that 2 guides would be the best situation, I'm less sure most people would agree to pay for it though!
Keep the suggestions going, semi anonymous information on what folk are wanting from a guided alpine day/holiday is very hard to come by, and plenty of providers lurk on STW to try and work it out
Ability to drive a minibus without scaring the passengers.
The main thing I want from a guide is a big bag full of stuff!
1. The ability to quickly assess the competency of the riders they are chaperoning and cater the day to the riders even if it means changes plans on a dime. To precede this - the financial balls to turn people away at the booking stage if they fall outside of the competency range for the planned trip (if you are filling an advertised day, rather than being hired for the day by a group that already know each other).
2. The ability to operate in different 'modes' to suit the clients. To not just plan the day to suit but also to be able to read the room - to have the emotional intelligence to work out if a 'hyped up' super enthusiastic high fiving guide is needed or is the mood more chilled and to act accordingly. A good guide/instructor needs to be a chameleon in terms of personality.
3. For the day they generate not to be all about the guide......a million and one stories all about them and how cool/rad/gnar they are. The guide is the facilitator, not the main event and take away memory of the day. You deliver an epic day and memories of you are almost an afterthought.
4. The local knowledge to hook together a day a rider could not put together by themselves with guidebooks/trailforks/strava heatmaps etc etc
To actually do what you promised. People have potentially travelled for days to get to your destination, but on a few occasions we've only ended up getting 2 or 3 short sessions of guiding. Sometimes there are genuine reasons which is absolutely fine, but other times:
- Can't be arsed.
- Arranged something else (we've had all sorts - booked an entirely different course in, taking their wife to the airport so she can go on a yoga retreat, kids are on school holiday so just fancied spending time with them).
- Double booked someone else (often an easy group pootle because it was hard work taking 4 fit people up a mountain).
- Doing their second job.
I should point out we've not had this with the proper organised week holidays like Ciclo, Bike Village, BV, Czech MTB etc. It is more the accommodation with sideline in bike guiding by the owner (maybe with one exception who will remain nameless).
In France I've employed a guide for school groups and in Spain with the club. Really simple, employ a guide with an up to date MCF guide/coach card which demands a high level of training and qualification that covers all the considerations in the posts above and more. Equally at home shepherding school kids or coaching DH, trials, road...and it proves they're insured. Like ESF but bike rather than ski.
As a general rule I'd prefer a local guide and not worry about language skills. If I managed to communicate well enough to hire them the rest isn't going to be an issue. If you can post on this forum the vast majority of guides speak a language you speak well enough.
I’m looking for someone who’ll show me something I would not have easily found by myself, eg a trail, restaurant or shortcut.
With regards to the guide/coach thing.
I would get a guide if I was to go a new area and had a limited time to explore on my own. I would want them to show me the best places to ride (and therefore they need to be assess my/the group's skills and fitness quickly) and take us to appropriate places we would enjoy.
I would get a coach if there was something specific I wanted to learn/improve. That would probably be local, eg learn to jump better, ride Northshore, whatever. I would expect that to be in a fairly small area, seasoning sections and increasing difficulty until I'd got confident at it. I would be unlikely to travel far to do this, but then I have the Tweed Valley literally on my doorstep so other than learning glaciers for something like Mountain of Hell I can practice almost anything here
There might be a bit of crossover for, say, something like the Mega. Can you show me the route (that's pretty well signed/obvious but just an example) and show me the best lines and how best to ride the harder features.
My first guided trip was with MBMB in Chamonix back in '95. It started with a local ride, partly due to weather, but also to assess general group skills and fitness. The guiding from then on was perfect in my view, the owner (Phil) was at the front, and as it was a large group (15 people?) there was a guy at the back to encourage the guy's struggling (i.e. me) and to deal with mechanicals. Guided, for me, means picking a route you couldn't have worked out yourself and this is where they did really well, heading uphill on short road sections where the natural inclincation was to go down. As it was residential for a week, we also had beers together, Phil DJ'ed in his local bar and of course we all ate together in the evenings.
My other guide experience was one day in Finale Ligure. There were only three of us so there was one guide who again, took us down an easy route first to assess bike condition, fitness, and bravery. The day just got better and better as we got more confident and he increased the route difficulty. He also did a minor suspension tune on our bikes at one point to make them better at descending. The guide was Francesco Gozio. 👍
I've been guided a few times snowboarding too, our best guide was a local legend and one of the original snowboarders. Our worst guide was in Saas Fee, we asked for nothing crazy in terms of routes and an English or French speaking snowboarder. We got a local guy, on skis, who only spoke German. He tried to get us to do an abseil off a cliff, then took us on a ski itinerary where we had to walk out of a valley in deep snow while he huffed and puffed poling along on his skis. In short, listen to the client, and provide who or what they ask for.
I hope this helps.
Speaking as an ex-guide, it still amazes me that 'local knowledge' seems pretty well at the bottom of the list when it comes to hiring criteria. I was guiding in a country that I'd only been in a couple of weeks. I tried to memorize trails from a map so I didn't come across as a moron, and then 'going for a pee behind a tree', when in reality checking a map before sending people down the wrong trail because I'd not ridden the trail either.... Pro level stuff 😀
If anything goes wrong, the guide needs to know the best way off the mountain, which isn't always on Trailforks. Needs to be able to describe where they are should they need to call in help.
18 years later I still see guiding companies hiring people that have only gotten off a plane the week before. Sigh....
Just to elaborate on the coach comments I made (as it's started some debate) I was thinking of one specific guide we'd ridden with. We'd been riding for a couple of hours and he said "I was going to take you down this trail, but there's another great trail nearby which is a step up in technical features but I think you'll be OK if you want to try it". No pressure from the guide but we went for it and he then gave a really good demo down each feature and walked us us through the line etc while managing the whole peer pressure thing really well, and TBH I think he was as stoked about getting us down it as we were about riding it.
So not coaching in the same sense of a day with Jedi, but more involved in developing our riding than many guides would have been.
Just a few quick thoughts:
- Good people skills and ability to deal with the challenging personalities you sometimes get in groups
- Great trail knowledge
- Asking/judging group's needs - and responding to it
- Riding from back where the trail is obvious enough for punters to follow
- Personally I don't want a 1.5hr lunch stop for a huge meal where the guide/company is getting a kickback
- Asking/judging group's needs - and responding to it
There's a real art to that - the fine line between warning the group when they need to know about something versus stopping too much to warn about stuff that everyone will hit - different line for every group
Trail knowledge of the trails type i ask for that i couldn't find easily on my own and how to link them together. If i'm in Morzine then i don't want jumpy Chatel style trails, i want FoD on steroids, long FoD i guess is it... with beers in the middle. 😀
I don't want coaching, i don't want you to fix my bike, i don't even want you to call me an ambulance, you're a guide, that's it... Show me the trails and routes, simple as that.
Not a must but a real bonus is subtle/natural coaching ability. Best guide I rode with took us out on the first day and saw how we rode and asked about what we wanted to ride and tailored the routes to our ability. He was also fast to spot basic riding errors and was good at coaching us past them (for me it was steep RH switchbacks, a simple tip and banter-level encouragement not to forget it over the week sorted that). During the week some of us improved in a way that really added to what we rode and how we felt about it all.
Been on two guided trips.
On The first one, the first day, first trail, the Downhill bro guide set off like a stabbed rat, Half of us lost him, and the one of the group who managed to keep up broke his ankle having been led off an awkward drop. First day, first trail.
The second was Andorra. Only so much to do in a single bike park, but the guide meant we had some good days riding local "off piste" bits and local bridlepath class trails with the guide who knew the routes, and how to link them up off the lifts, along with a big day out using the minibus.
I dont think they need an encyclopiedic knowledge of local trails, but to have done a reasonable amount of prep and planning.
maybe if planning a potentially wet or hazardous route, to have an alternative in the back pocket.
and ideally the ability to judge the groups skill and speed, and adjust the plan accordingly either day to day or on the fly.
and of course sufficient first aid, mechanical and linguistic skills to keep everyone upright and happy.
Being less than 12 hours home after a trip in the Alps (and wanting to leave a review for our guide company today), these are my thoughts:
- coaching. Absolutely not. If I want to learn how to ride a bike then I won't go to the Alps and book a guide.
- ability to assess the capabilities of the group and tailor routes to suit
- not necessarily see themselves as a guide but as part of the group but one who knows the routes/trails
- general in-depth knowledge of the area. The best places for lunch/gelato/where to top up on water etc.
- fluent in the local language
- carries all the essentials and explains how they should be used. All the First Aid type related stuff etc
- has the ability to crash in the most spectacular ways 🙂
In this vein, if anyone wants to travel to the Italian Alps, Aosta Valley Freeride are absolutely superb. Literally faultless. Guided with Tom for 4 days now over the last year and its like riding with another mate albeit one who knows the best trails, the best refugios and the best bars for post ride drinks.
- coaching. Absolutely not. If I want to learn how to ride a bike then I won't go to the Alps and book a guide.
Its nice sometimes if you have a style of terrain you are totally unused to to get a brief discussion of how to attempt a certain crux move.
Certainly don't want it to be "lesson". I have overheard from the zore lift in morzine from a guide below explaining to a group (who were probably on 1 day of biking on a "activity" holiday) that they should use both brakes. Good advice but you've come up 2 large lifts to a downhill park... perhaps they should have been given a slightly less challenging route.
From a different point of view - I'd want the guide to be qualified, and able to work in the country they're guiding in. I'm a L3 BCF Guide in the UK, but I'm not allowed to guide in France without seemingly starting again... Let me know if you have any top tips on that front.
From my own experiences, a guide needs to be able to assess the group, rein in the speedy guys who'll take the wrong turns/big risks and encourage the tail enders without anyone noticing. They need to know how to fix bikes (and people) and when, and how, to call for help or cut the ride short. Pockets full of Haribo and a tube of chain lube/sun cream is good, as is a permanent air of cheeriness and indefatigability... The guide should be able to ride anything on the route with competence (even though there'll be quicker riders, up and down) and finish the day well within their personal energy limits. They need to know the trails well, but also where that hidden farm water tap is, when to warn about the sneaky waterbar/rockgarden and which pub/mountain chalet is going to be open and welcoming to riders at 2.25pm on a Sunday afternoon.
Chipps' summary +1
The guide is a sort of amalgamation of all your best riding mates in one paid-for package. They're the mate who knows the trails. Has the Haribo and cake. Can bodge any repair, because even if you think you have enough spares yourself, one day you'll snap a gear cable or some other ride ending but unlikely scenario and they'll spring to the rescue with a spare. Seemingly always has the useful bits of a first aid kit. Knows all the best local cafes. 80% of the time you never notice (or need) 80% of those skills, you just happen to ride the best trail and end up in the best cafe and nothing goes wrong, the other 20% of 20% is when you need one and they earn their money.
As a sort of counter to Weeksy personally I prefer a bit of coaching. If I wanted to ride the same trails as back home, just longer, I could do that on my own with a trail map or gpx as it's unlikely I'd exhaust all the waymarked stuff in the time available so off-piste knowledge isn't critical. I'd like to come away having ridden different trails or similar trails differently.
It doesn't need to be the classroom style coaching you get on a paid for coaching day where you spend a lot of time standing around chatting and ride the same jumps / corners for 4 hours practicing technique. But I find I respond better to someone who can spot mistakes (the ones I don't know I'm making), point them out next time we stop and then elaborate on how to improve on them each time they happen to be following me (or go ahead to demonstrate it).
Sorry Chipps but at your age getting through the timed DH and trials tests for the Frech qualification is going to be a challenge. A very fit 45-year-old in our club did it and he's the oldest recent success locally I'm aware of. You can do it in 13 months with UCPA.
It took junior 6 years to get through all the training for his ski Brevet d'Etat and cycling training is getting more like ski each year.
Type "DEJEPS moniteur de VTT" if you want the top coaching qualification or BPJEPS for basic guiding. I doubt you'll have the BAC +2 entry qualification for the DEJEPS but anyone (who speaks French) can do a BPJEPS. It's a minimum of 600 hours. Le ministère de la jeunesse et du sport has the info you need
https://www.sports.gouv.fr/bpjeps-21
The coaching side of things is interesting. There is value in explaining unique characteristics of trails that people might not know about.
I remember a GMBN video from years ago where their 'pro' riders went to Squamish and did a coaching video on how to ride the granite slab trails. It was terrible, got ripped apart in the comments, and IIRC got deleted pretty fast. The last thing you want to do on a steep granite rock roll is lean back 😀 So if talented riders come to a new area and can't ride the trails properly, then education can be useful.
I want a guide to promise that they will do their best:
To be true to themselves and develop their beliefs,
To serve the King and their community,
To help other people,
And to keep the Mountain Bike Guide Law."
I'm looking forwards to one of our guides in Italy in three weeks time carrying my bike for me on any hike a bike sections. 😉
Joking aside I think you have a pretty good handle already on what a guide should be.
Some of the rides we did with you last year were fantastic.
Only criticism I could make is you need to up your game on shit jokes.
See if Phil can send you some of his classics that he no longer needs.
Guides bikes should be emaculately maintained and reliable. On one trip, was told to be on a minimum of double down casings, guide was on exo, after their 4th puncture got slightly bored waiting for them to patch another tube. Also faffing with their bikes in the morning and waiting for them to be the last to load up.
Have had excellent guides in Molini, Rene (RadRides) being notably the best of the lot. He knows the trails like the back of his hand, can lead off the front, middle, back and made the holiday. His coaching and encouragement/positive heckling is second to none.
I'm of the view that the guide should be a quick rider and able to cater for all group speeds, nothing worse than plodding behind someone sitting on the brakes.
I've worked as a guide on and off for the last 15 years.
I started out guiding groups across the Alps from Bavaria to (usually) the Italian lakes. Did the German MTB guiding course over several weekends.
Worked for a company, ULP Bike and did three summers of riding and shuttling the luggage across the Alps. Week long tours with 3-12 guests, ~500km and 12,000m of climbing. Mostly gravel climbs and descending down alpine singletrails
In the winter months I worked on Gran Canaria for Free Motion as their MTB guide. Daily tours with anything upto 20 guests, albeit many of them with very little biking experience. Most tours were more scenic pootles, although the group occasionally meant we could ride something more interesting. A real mixed bag.
More recently (last 7 years) I've worked occasionally for friends in Finale. Typical Finale shuttle runs, "enduro" tours with a single uplift and long uppy-downy tour back to Finale riding some of the lesser known/ridden trails and occasionally driving the shuttle when it was busy.
In my opinion, some of the guides in Finale shouldn't be guiding. Many are seemingly there for their own training or ego. Very few carry any spares, first aid kit (nor knowledge!) or have much overview of what is happening at the back of the group. It seems that for many, going fast is all that matters....
I think I've usually done a pretty decent job.
Always have a first aid kit with me. Have dealt with some nasty accidents. Have had to call the mountain rescue a few times in the Alps. Worst one was on Gran Canaria where a guy was looking at the scenery and not the road (despite me two minutes earlier telling everyone (in both English and German) that we've plenty of time and if they want to enjoy the view they should stop). He fell into a wide, open water trench/drain and scraped his face along the rock. Helmet destroyed. Big pool of blood around his head. Long story short, he had ripped half the skin off his face, you could see his cheek bones and his top lip was hanging off, held only by a thread of skin. He ended up being airlifted out.
It's important to know where the next gravel road or access point is for the shuttle driver or (worst case!) ambulance.
I'm a pretty confident and competent rider. In my experience people are happy to receive a few pointers if it helps them get down (or up!) a trail. Be that foot placement when seeing off uphill or (classic) alpine switchbacks.
I'm not there to teach, but if I see someone struggling with something I'll offer my advice.
I'll usually start a tour with an easier trail and position myself so that I can see people riding down in order to assess their skills. I'll then tailer the ride to suit. This is particularly the case when riding Transalp and in Finale.
Depending on the location I'm happy to hang back and let the guests ride up front. If we're on well defined trails with obvious landmarks and I can say "wait at this ruin/signpost". If we're on a more technical trail I will lead and let folks know what's coming up. Particularly when riding up I'll hang back with the slower riders. I used to say "Gibt den Gast den Gipfel" (give the guest the peak), but really I was happy to take it easy, especially if I'm riding all summer.
In Finale you'll often find that many folks have ridden there before and know the trails. If that's the case I'm happy to hang back and ride safe. No point in spannering yourself or feeling under pressure to ride fast.
I think a bit of basic bike maintenance knowledge and how to fix something is to be expected. I always started my Transalp tours the night before with a bike check. Noone checked their own bike, always that of someone opposite. People tend to be a bit complacent when it comes to their own bikes.
I think it helps as a guide if you're a bit of a people person. This is particularly the case when you're spending a whole week with a group of strangers.
Some of the best guides I know are not the fastest riders, but are competent, encouraging and entertaining.
OP back again, thanks all for the many replies. Lots of grand info in there, which I think could be summarised as; a good guide has a very wide ranging role requiring a vast mix of skills which they must pick from as appropriate for each rider they are with
It does sound like a few of you have had some pretty bad experiences with guides, which would put me off wanting to hire one if it happened a couple times in a row. Without knowing the circumstances I can't speculate much, but I'd hope these negative situations didn't happen with guides who had been well trained through recognised programmes and worked in locations where their work is respected and paid more appropriately. There are a number of popular MTB holiday destinations where guides are paid less than €50 (or sometimes not at all) and are basically doing the job for free uplift.
At the opposite end, Bike Verbier, Bike Village, Francesco are all great examples I'd recommend to any aspiring MTB guide to look at for how to be pure dead good at it
@thepurist (and several others!) For me this is a great example of how even a guide that doesn't want to specialise in coaching still needs a good level to help their clients make the most of their day or week with them. And hopefully come back again! And I'd say those folk namechecked above are all perfect examples
@weeksy This is where it gets more interesting. In all the western alps countries the guide does have a duty of care to their clients, so they are for sure using their first aid skills if needed, and calling for rescue if required. If they don't they could be prosecuted. They also need to have a good idea that everyone's bike is safe to ride. In theory guides should be doing a full bike check of every client before the ride starts, obviously this would not go down well with a lot of people... So, for a client such as that, their bike will be loaded or unloaded for them onto the trailer, or you'll ask a question about some shiny part on their bike and ask to give the lever a squeeze/bounce on the suspensions etc, we don't care about that part, it's just so we can see what condition the bike is in. If something then breaks on the bike and the client has a solid bike and clearly knows what they're doing then I'd agree the guide doesn't need to get involved, unfortunately that's not the case with everyone, so I think that's still a pretty vital skill. Then there's the trails. Which in Morzine is a particularly interesting point. There's lots of trails that guides will ride with friends, but can't guide. If the trail isn't legal and you're on it with a client who has an accident, you're getting in actual trouble. And that's now much of (not all tbf) the more interesting stuff around Morzine. For what you're asking you just need to make friends in the Pleny with someone who'll take a pint or 3 as payment, or @thisisnotaspoon 's system. Both of which are much cheaper than a guide as an added bonus
@chipps You don't quite need to start from ground zero, but as @Edukator explains is the quickest way through, so it is near enough. You could do the ABMG qualification which is the next one up from what you have, then do the EOmtbing qualification, then have evidence of 2 years full time guiding experience, then apply for equivalence with the French authorities and gain your Carte Pro that way. Or just work in Switzerland/Italy/UK where you don't need any of that
@singlespeedstu Seems fair payback for last year (cheers again) although I'm still getting to choose where I'd be carrying your bike to and what's on the other side.... And bringing a recording of Phil at his phinest to play on repeat 😉
I have a good idea of what *I* think a guide should be, informed by both a wheen of training but more importantly having been fortunate to work with a load of the absolute best guides in the world, and I try to put those ideas into practice. But, that's just what I think, so I want to know what other people think, partly so I can improve as a guide by getting an idea of how other people expect a guide to behave, but also so as I can help trainee guides with examples from real people (STW forum users are real people aren't they?) as some of the folk wanting to be guides have different ideas about what a guide should be, and it could be that they were right and I was out of date.
Anyways, thanks again to everyone for their input, and I'll keep paying attention to any more feedback for sure!
I'm still getting to choose where I'd be carrying your bike to and what's on the other side....
This is what i'm looking forwards to. Your built in map of the alps is pretty impressive.
I was suspecting you'd be on the Italy trip and was pleased to see it confirmed from Sam this morning. 😎
@grump You could do the ABMG qualification which is the next one up from what you have, then do the EOmtbing qualification, then have evidence of 2 years full time guiding experience, then apply for equivalence with the French authorities and gain your Carte Pro that way. Or just work in Switzerland/Italy/UK where you don't need any of that
To be honest, I'm never going to have the time, inclination (or fluent enough French) to do that before I'm 65... We get so few cycling guests here that I'd rather just point them at the marked (and/or GPSed) trails around here and spend my free time on exploring new stuff, trailbuilding and maintenance. If I were 20 years younger, perhaps. But for now, they can find their own way and I'll hire a guide if I need one...