So you want to hire a guiding outfit to help make your adventure dreams come true. Well, there are a few critical questions you should ask before paying them your hard earned cash and more importantly putting your life in their hands. In this and subsequent posts, we are going to give you a list of those questions and our thoughts on acceptable answers.

What kind of routes are we going to be doing?

Since you are hiring a guide, you are probably going somewhere you’ve never been before, and you want to make sure you can physically do it. You can ask how far do will you hike each day, but if the answer is just a mileage distance, you should be concerned. No two miles are the same in the outdoors. There are several factors you should consider.

Environmental Factors: A mile at sea level in the desert is completely different than a mile in the mountains at a high elevation. You should understand the environmental factors of temperature, sun, wind and altitude where you are going.

Terrain Factors: If you are looking for a stroll in the woods, a well manicured park is the type of terrain you want underfoot. If you are looking for something more challenging you are going to find rocks, scree, roots and loose dirt. All of these have a major impact on the exertion level and time required to cover a mile in the outdoors.

Altitude Factors: The fresh and crisp air of the mountains is special, but it comes with less oxygen. If you are going to altitude, you will want to know the highest altitude, and what acclimatization plan they have to give the group time to adjust as altitudes increase.

Grade of the Terrain: Much of these factors all come together in what is called grade of the terrain. This is the grade of the trail in percentage. 90% is straight up and 0% is flat. Some trails we do are only 5 miles long but have 3,000’ of climbing and take 4 to 5 hours to complete.

With Top Out Adventures we answer these type of questions in two ways. We have an adventure rating on our website that describes each trip in terms of its physical difficulty and compares it to more traditional exercises like running. We also describe our routes in terms of time. We all have a sense for the effort required to hike or trail run for an hour. So if we say that we will be out for 5 hours, we can get a sense for the total effort regardless of whether its a flat 15 miles or 3 miles straight up and back down. Finally we get to know our clients and their strengths and weaknesses. We’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what an individual can do and enjoy on our routes.

You Better Ask! Part 2

Trails, Tacos & Friends: Adventures Trail Running in Mexico

You Better Ask! Part 1