Saturday March 5, 2011
PATC TRAIL PATROL
One-On-One Training
Sunday
Bearfence Hike
and Skyline Drive
The Forsythia along the road up to the trail head was just starting to bloom.
When we arrived at the parking lot it was lightly raining and the cloud deck was really low. As the day progressed the rain stopped and the cloud deck went from about 200 feet off the ground to about five thousand feet off the ground.
Alex F. and Ray J. my One-On-One students. Great additions to the PATC Trail Patrol roster.
ADVICE
Hire A Guide
(A very inexpensive TIME expander.)
A thought for all you busy professionals whose TIME out in nature is a more limited resource than the money you earn during your long hours of professional work. Think about hiring a guide. For a relatively small amount of money a good guide can make sure that your hours are optimized:
- If you are a 5.8 lead climber on business travel and you can only fit in an extra day at your scenic destination which has a climbing area you have never been too, if you hire a guide they can make sure you squeeze in the best routes that your talents and time will allow before you have to jet back home.
- Maybe you can second 5.10 but are uncomfortable leading it at the moment. Hire a guide and they can lead the classics that are within your seconding ability but beyond your leading comfort zone.
- If you want to take relatives, friends or coworkers out for an outdoor experience but have never given any thought about how or where you could do this while making it fun and safe for all hire a guide. Guides are all about being able to provide enjoyable safe outdoor experiences for clients with a very wide range of abilities.
- If you want to experience a hidden back country gem but wanted to avoid the chance of wasting your time bushwhacking to the wrong place hire a guide.
TIME IS A VERY LIMITED RESOURCE
I once estimated how many wonderful sunny 70 degree days I might have to spend in the outdoors over the remainder of my potential life. I will not share the the results because they are depressing as in Just shoot me now!
After doing this simple mathematical exercise I went from thinking "Why would I every hire a guide?" to thinking "Heck it might make sense to hire two on some days." or "Hiring one to spend an extra day prepping a route or caching supplies.".
For those of you with a little economics ... rational humans should act as though TIME as a very inelastic resource but they do not. Since most humans think of themselves as immortal they are terrible at making rational decisions about the value of TIME.
For a primer on inelastic resources visit the following link and look for the section on elastic versus inelastic.
Think of Guides as a resource/tool that can expand your life-time-limit of great outdoor experiences. If humans were rational about how they value time they would have bid the price for guide services way above the current market rate. Since humans, even very smart humans like consultants, lawyers, doctors are terrible judges of the true value of time (Their intuitive assumption is that they are going to live forever and TIME is infinite therefore of very little value). At the present moment, using a guide service at American or European prices is a scandalous bargain. If you can afford the air fare some foreign destinations have guide prices that are a fraction of what the going rates are in America or Europe.
If you are looking for a local guide or an organization involved with outdoor experiential learning check out:
SUNDAY
If you double click than expand/enlarge the picture you should be able to read the text on this sign.
On Sunday it was raining pretty hard all day. Rather than spend the whole day out in the rain Anita and I explored Skyline Drive and took a short hike on Bearfence Mountain. This mountain has a great rock scramble on it and one of the few 360 degree views in SNP. Anita and I will be returning here for some trad climbing training and bouldering in the future.
It seems from the SNP Trail Head sign that in warmer weather this is rattlesnake country. Because of the rain I did not take my camera but Chad has a better post with pictures about Bearfence Mountain at:
http://shenandoahmountainguides.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html#8616677949392341506
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