Tunnel View
Hello Everyone,
I am officially back to work and my first tour of the season is behind me. This is my 16th tour season and my second working for Incredible Adventures here in San Francisco. I had a great summer working for Incredible last year, one of the best I’ve had in my career in fact, and I’m looking forward to another great season to come. I will still be running tours for Exodus and Intrepid, two of the brands I have guided for many years now, and will continue to run short Incredible Adventures tours as well.
The start of the summer tour season is always exciting. It is full of possibilities and just thinking about the places I will visit and the people I will meet puts a smile on my face. I know it will be exhausting and things won’t always work out as planned or as hoped, but I also know I am up for the challenge. Over the winter I visited an old friend of mine, Brett, at his home in western Wales. Brett came on tour with me many years ago and he asked me while I was there if my guiding personality is the same as my real personality. I told him that the only way to be truly happy and successful in this job is to be yourself. The more you try and be like someone else or act in a way that isn’t reflective of your own personality, the more people will see through you and it will always backfire in the end. That being said, I also told him that while when I am guiding it is absolutely me that people are seeing, I also believe that it is the very best version of me that there is. It’s the version of me who is outgoing and confident and an absolute expert in my field. I think three steps ahead and change my plans based on each individual group I take out. There are a lot of unknowns in this game from traffic to the weather to the individual personalities and expectations of my passengers and being able to think on the fly and make things run smoothly is a real skill. Being a good guide doesn’t just happen overnight. Like any other profession it takes years to hone your skills, but it’s so worth the effort when you do. I’ve been turning people’s dreams into memories for the better part of two decades, and I’m thrilled that this is the skill I have to offer the world.
After I left you last week, I had one more day in the office which I will spare you the details of. I had to go grocery shopping to feed 12 hungry people for the weekend which is always a challenge. Thankfully I got all of that finished at a reasonable time and was able to take a nice long walk around downtown San Francisco and then tuck into a good book to refresh my knowledge of Yosemite and still get a good night’s sleep. I was up early on Friday as I had to get to the office, hook up my trailer to my van, load my coolers and get back downtown before 8am. I picked up my group on time and we headed out to Yosemite for the weekend.
Yosemite is pretty wild right now with all of the snow melting into the rivers and pouring over the edge of the cliffs and into the valley below. The waterfalls are crazy and there are even waterfalls flowing that I’ve never seen before. The river has overflowed its banks and the meadows have turned into lakes. Unfortunately all of the snow and water has closed down many of the trails and the high country won’t be open for another month or two. That being said, it’s really beautiful in the park right now and we found plenty to keep ourselves busy during the weekend. When we arrived, we drove around the valley to take some photos and see what was happening and then hiked out to Lower Yosemite Falls. It was very powerful and we all got drenched by the spray, but it was refreshing and invigorating as well. On Saturday, most of my group hiked to Vernal and/or Nevada Falls and I hiked up towards Upper Yosemite Falls. I reached a point where I was ankle deep in flowing water and decided I had too much on the line to get hurt so I turned back. It was still a nice day out there and a little afternoon shower cleaned the air for a wonderful evening. On Sunday we packed up and then spent the morning at the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. I haven’t been to that particular grove in many years and it was really nice to go back for a visit. We did about a 6 mile roundtrip hike to the beautiful Grizzly Giant tree which was definitely worth the effort. It was a long day, but we ended up cruising back into San Francisco around 7pm, early enough for everyone to make their evening flights. It was a great group of people and I think we all had a really fun time out there. I know I did. It was also nice to go out that night and have a few beers with a friend and decompress a little bit from the weekend’s activity.
Upper Yosemite Falls Reflection
I spent Monday morning in the office and then went out to move Shadow Catcher to her permanent summer home which I was incredibly thankful to have lined up this week. I feel confident that it will be alright out there and it’s considerably cheaper than where I had her all week. The moving process took all afternoon though between traffic and public transportation etc. and I was pretty tired when I finally left the office around 7. I was grateful for a quiet night after that and to have one more thing off of my mind. I did pop out for a quick drink at The Summer Place, one of my favorite neighborhood bars here in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood. The owner, Brett, was there and even though I haven’t been to his bar in six months he remembered what I was drinking which is always the sign of a true professional. It’s little things like that which make me feel comfortable and happy to be back in San Francisco.
Today I headed in for one more day in the office but I brought with me an old friend from my old tour company who flew in late last night and will be working with us at Incredible Adventures this summer. Stephen was a senior tour leader when I began my guiding career and we both spent many years in the early 2000s guiding tours in Western Canada. We both left the company to travel down other roads at different points, but we both circled back and I last saw him when we were both winding up from the 2019 season, the last for our old company. We chat quite a bit online and he asked me a lot of questions last year about Incredible to see whether it would be a good fit for him. It was great to spend the morning with him and get him started at the office and I know he will have a fun and successful year. He is one of the few guides I know who enjoys the process and the people as much as I do and we have often commented to each other as to how lucky we are to work in the field. I had to go back to the grocery store today and finish my plans for the coming two weeks and then I met my group for a wonderful dinner in Chinatown. It is a special charter trip for the University of Austin which will look at the environmental challenges facing the National Parks today. It should be a fun trip and I have really been looking forward to it and the students seemed pleasant and eager to be here which is great.
Tomorrow we are heading back to Yosemite for three days and I’m really looking forward to seeing those waterfalls again. From there we’ll head to Barstow for a night and then on to Grand Canyon for three days. We’ll round out this trip with a Navajo guided tour of Monument Valley, a kayaking excursion on Lake Powell, and a couple of days of hiking in Bryce and Zion before finishing up in Las Vegas. It’s going to be a busy two weeks and we’ll be camping, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to get this post done next week, but I’ll be thinking of you all while I’m out there. I promise I will get back to you as soon as I can, hopefully with more stories from Yosemite and some great photos from the desert. For all of my American readers, have a great Memorial Day weekend and I hope you all have an amazing start to your summer wherever you are (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere in which case I hope your winter plans are coming together). I’ll see you when I see you, but I really appreciate you reading and being a part of this adventure. Until next time, have fun out there.
-Mike