Client Responsibility
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The reasons for writing this are many.
Firstly I have just finished leading a 35 day high altitude trek and have spent all that time – 24 hours with the same group of 5 people.
Mainly my intentino is not to criticise anyone, especially not the clients that provice my living, but to make the whole industry aware that products are being missold. Everyone is suffering. Firstly the clients because there is a mismatch betweeen their skills, experience, ambitions and the expeditions that they are often being forced into.
If this was the Financial Industry there would be muliple claims. Not
All of this has come about because the industry has changed. Commercial expedition companies have only existed and been packaging adventure for the past 10 – 15 years. They arose as a demand from “experienced climbers” who had neither the motivation or time to organise such big projects, So the expedition company evolved. In other words a UK agent. They sold the package to a client and then resourced all the activities from flights, to equimetn such as tents to teh porters and basecamp services.
Even now they are stilll sstepping back from what you would expect they would do. They provide a weekend “ogether” before sending you off. They are only booking agents with fancy brochures and websites. Of course you can be sensible and choose to progress slowly through the different levels and grades of mountains but all too often trips are short and rather than cancelling them, the agent will suggest an alternative.
This will differ considerably from your well researched expedition of a lifetime.
So back to these original “climber clients”. More often than not they had done multiple seasons in Scotland of the Alps before venturing to the Himalayas or the Americas. They had also climbed by themselves.
In a recent group of 5 people who had paid over £5000 each to climb a 7000m peak, I was shocked to see such a level of expereience. Although they had all signed a form that said they coulud use a harness and crampons I didnt believe it. Virtually evertime time we had to use technical gear I had to remind them not only when to use it but alos to do buckles correctly and refasten crampons. One client walked for over 10 minutes without realsing that 1 of his crampons had fallen off.
I was concerned so asked about genereal experience. We wre climbing a 7000m peak that required clients to carry heavy loads , maybe over 15kg, pitch tents and cook for themselves, They alos need to be able to jumar. Of the 5 clients, they had not spent more than 10 weekends in Scotland and hardly any by themselves learning skills. This is .
i was appaled.
I ecently competed in my first Ironman. For me this was also a massive undertaking. Not only the fact that I had to be physically fit enough to swim 3.8km, bike 180km and then