First year guide working the Noli, any tips or advice ?
This is excellent advice for all first-year river guides, regardless of river.
Wear sunscreen.
Be careful on Tuesdays
I feel like I’m walking into something 😂 what happens on Tuesday
T-Grip Tuesday lol some guides will go hunting for pfds with their tgrips and try to yank other guides out their boats
God I hate t grip Tuesday. It’s all fun and games until you blow someone’s knee out.
Listen. Ask questions. Offer to help. Learn how to have fun with your guests. Reading the river is key. If you show up with a few beers for the crew once or twice it won’t hurt either
Congrats, guiding was one of the best 10 yrs of my life! Doah, Potomac, Cheat then Gauley in the mid Atlantic region. Learned to kayak some traditional class V stuff and became one of the local big guys around the scene. I'm far removed as I've been stuck working in the surgical arena for the past 23 yrs, almost want to throw in the towel and go back in to that life for a bit. If you do it long enough you'll end up with great stories. Once had to ask AL Gore to get out of the way so I could get the guides and trailer full of rafts to the put in, numerous hook up with cuties, midnight booze cruises (when you're butt naked don't sit across from your bro, maybe sit across from her?), dude that was a lead musician for David Bowie and his girl (that's a whole story in itself), was on a TV commercial, met/raced EJ and countless other Olympians......... It's a job that generally doesn't pay well but makes up in experience and perspective for sure. Learn to "Read the room" with customers, you'll learn very valuable social skills that will help you in later life, it did me for sure. Congrats again, get necessary gear and you most likely will enjoy the heck out of the life!
There are lots of posts that answer your question over the past few months.
Listen to your instructors, they dedicate a lot of time to training new guides and have a lot of experience on your section of the river. Be humble and approach guiding as a completely new skill that you will get good at but not start off so hot, don’t be discouraged just keep listening and learning. Watch a lot of videos on YouTube of people running the Nolichucky and study up on how they’re reading whitewater and choosing the routes they take, there are standard routes but if you just learn the routes to the Nolichucky then you’ll be a Nolichucky guide, if you learn to read water and the hydrology behind it you will be a river guide on the Nolichucky. Big difference.
Lastly, work on your customer service - it’s a service and tourism industry, we work with guests on their vacations, so set ego aside and give each group the trip they want. Timid families probably don’t want to surf up at every single hole… and while other guides might give you a hard time, your tips will outweigh their egotistical banter.