What to Expect when Adventuring with Mountain Experience

In our effort to assure quality trips, we generally include many things on our adventures to create a memorable experience for our clientele. Here’s what you can expect to find when going on a "Mountain Experience"

Most importantly, we look to provide our participants a fun and enjoyable experience which will leave many fond memories for years to come. This is accomplished by pulling together a well organized trip from beginning to end, including:

• Qualified, highly experienced and friendly trip leaders and guides with appropriate leadership, first-aid, rescue, and third-world travel experience. Depending on your adventure, we may also include qualified local guides, which helps us provide you with the most current route and travel conditions. We have developed strong relationships with many guides around the world.

• Many of our guides are certified by the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) or the UIAGM, and all of our Mountain Experience Guides follow the standard practices employed by these organizations during our mountaineering and trekking adventures—an assurance that you will be looked after with the utmost professional care.

• Well thought out and designed trip itineraries that expose trip participants to a variety of experiences in a challenging and enjoyable way. Each time we lead an adventure, we adjust it with knowledge from our previous trips, which allows us to offer our clientele the best each area has to offer using a well organized and "reasonable" approach. We also like to plan in some "down time" for optional participant exploration (the amount of time for this will vary from trip to trip).

• Trip ratios of at least one guide for every three to four participants, or higher on more technical climbs, like Alpamayo or Mt. Kenya (one guide to one/two climbers). Our habit is to over-staff vs. under-staff our trips—especially our "tech trips." We will have at least one American or fully certified guide on each trip, and as many as four Mountain Experience guides on the more technical trips. We may also utilize local guides, as mentioned above, in addition to our regular staff.
  
• Quality and very complete Mountain Experience trip orientation packets, which will help you prepare and organize your travel plans and arrangements for your upcoming adventure with Mountain Experience.

• Timely correspondence and answers to your pre and post trip questions and needs. Topics typically vary from equipment, training, itinerary, food, and accommodations. We can address all these and more. We can assist with your preparations from home to summit and return.

• Qualified trip participants, by way of our resume review process. This helps to assure your time and effort has the highest payoff in terms of enjoyment and potential success. You’ll be adventuring with souls with similar backgrounds, which is important for trip enjoyment and potential success in the mountains.

• High quality VHF communication radios, for communications between guides, other trekking or climbing parties, and our local agents. We are also incorporating the use of cell-phones and satellite telephone whenever possible, and where reception is available.

• Gamow Hyperbaric Rescue Bags are taken on all Mountain Experience high-altitude trips (one bag, to at least base camp), for emergency treatment of high-altitude illnesses. This represents a large financial investment for us, but it’s worth the extra bit of safety and client care it provides.

• Oxygen saturation meters are taken on each trip to help with diagnosing high-altitude illnesses. These instruments provide us with one more piece of information to help us with critical high-altitude decisions.

• Sterile needles, intravenous and suture kits are taken on all Mountain Experience third world adventures. Many people are concerned about being treated by doctors in third-world countries, and this measure in emergencies, helps these doctors maintain our first-world sterile practices. This kit is taken in addition to our standard group first-aid kit.

• Quality group gear, including tents, ropes, stoves, and other items (all in good repair).

• Sufficient amounts of high quality foods and  are taken on all Mountain Experience adventures. We also like to focus on a wide variety of tasty foods to keep things interesting. Meals lower on the mountain and on our safaris are more complex and often use local supplies and cooks, while meals higher up in the mountains are simpler and easier to prepare, and often consist of dried and dehydrated foods. Vegetarians are accommodated per their requirements.

• Mountain Experience is an "insured" guiding company, and we go to great lengths to maintain our insurability by leading adventures in a responsible, organized, and safe manner in accordance with national and international guiding standards.
  
• Lastly, Mountain Experience is a "Registered Seller of Travel" in the State of Washington, which assures you that your trip deposits and payments are handled according to Washington State laws which govern travel agents and providers of travel. A trust account is utilized for your deposits and payments, which protects your investment in your upcoming adventure.

Every one of our trips has different items that are included or excluded. Further details on this are included on each specific trip itinerary.

You may also find more related information in About Mountain Experience, or our Reservation Information.